Terminal
by Sparkling Amethyst
Summary: After her mother's passing, Bella Swan moves to Forks with her dad. She is desperately trying to get her life back, but after getting help with her emotional issues dealing with her mom's death, she's diagnosed with a life-threatening disorder. Plus, vampire Edward Cullen sure knows how to give her butterflies, and they quickly fall in love. But what's this about the Volturi, now?
1. Chapter One

**Okay, this is the first chapter, guys. I'm begging you to please give it a chance. **

**This story is already complete. A new chapter will be posted once a week. **

**Disclaimer – I don't own the Twilight Saga. All rights go to Stephanie Meyer.**

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**Chapter One of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

"_Excuse me, is Isabella Swan in here?" He was a tall man, with a long mustache and a piece of paper in his hand. His uniform was that of a police officer – one I had seen my father wear when he came home from work. _

_My second grade teacher nodded and pointed me out. "She's right back there . . . Bella? Would you come here, please, sweetie?" _

_I was confused. The man was so tall, and I was frightened to get closer to him than I already was. But I did as my teacher said – I always did – and I stood up and walked to the front of the room. _

"_Come with me, honey," the man said. "Let's go see your daddy, okay?" _

"_But what about school?" I asked innocently. _

_The man chuckled, tilted his head to the side, and offered me a lopsided grin. But it didn't seem to be a genuine smile. He appeared sad. There was something wrong. Even as a little girl, I could feel it. "Don't worry about your lessons, honey. Let's just get you to your dad, okay?" _

_I nodded, and as my teacher – Mrs. Hutchinson – nudged me to take the stranger's hand, I did, and we walked out of the room. _

I wouldn't learn until later that my mother was gone.

And my father was ruined.

…

"Look, Bells," my father sighed. He placed his paper down on the kitchen table. "You don't have to go to school today. We can wait a day or two . . . or a week, if that's what you want."

I sat my orange juice down on the counter I was leaning against. "I want to go today, Dad. I'm already behind because of the move, and it's halfway through the school year. I don't know anyone and I've never seen the school before. But I'm not going to make new friends until I get into the halls and classrooms. I can do this, Dad. _We _can do this." We needed to. Getting out of Phoenix was the best thing for us – leaving those awful memories of my mother behind. This was a clean start for both of us.

"Are you _sure_, Bella?" Charlie pressed, eyes wide and worried. "I keep thinking that maybe it's too soon."

"Too soon for what?" I asked. "Moving on? Moving forward? It's been eight years, Dad. Eight years since . . ." I closed my eyes, fighting the memories. Behind my closed eyelids, I saw my mother's face. But she wasn't smiling; she wasn't happy. She was dead, gone, lifeless. The black hole that had been in my heart for a little less than a decade began to threaten to suck my entire being inside as I stared the mental picture. I shuddered, flinging my eyes open to fight the panic that I knew was coming. I hadn't been able to think of my mother since her death. My eyes welled up with tears and I turned around to face the sink for a moment, pretending to rise my glass out. I didn't want my dad to see my sadness. I needed to go to school, get myself out there. I needed to get over this. It had been far too long for my grieving to be this intense.

"Maybe you need to see a therapist again," he suggested gently. The newspaper on the table crinkled and I pictured him folding it up and placing it on his growing pile. We'd been in our new house for about three days now, and he'd yet to throw one away.

I thought back to the three therapists I'd been taken to earlier in my childhood, around the age of ten, and shook my head. "Not a chance. They never helped me."

Charlie frowned at me. "Will you at least promise to talk to the guidance counselor at Forks High if you need to?"

_No_, I thought. _Not going to happen. _"Okay," I agreed anyway to comfort him. He was also starting work at the Forks Police Station today and I didn't want him to be stressed out while worrying about me. I glanced at the clock above the doorway and sighed. "I'd better get going." I pecked him on the cheek, grabbing my bag off of the chair next to him. "I'll have dinner ready when you get home."

He grinned at me. "You're the best, Bells."

I shrugged. "Bye, Dad."

"Love you, Bells," he called as I opened the front door.

"I love you, too."

…

Orange and yellow flames lapped at the air just outside the window. I felt my eyes burning as I stared blankly at them, wondering if this was the time I would burn. Was this the fire that would end my life? I felt the heat against my skin, even through the glass of the window in the office I was in. A woman appeared in my line of view and opened said window, and I thought_ can't you see the fire? Do you want to die? _I knew I needed to get out of there, but I couldn't move. My mother's face was in my mind again.

The flames reached up and caught the ugly white curtains on fire along with the grass. Suddenly, the entire room around me was on fire. The metal chair I was sitting in threatened to melt under me. The skirt that I'd bought for this day that I never planned to wear again was the next object to catch fire and I looked down to watch the singed pathway it left behind as it climbed up my leg. I wondered why I didn't feel the pain of the fire. Why wasn't my leg burning?

I sucked in a breath, but the smell of the smoke that was surrounding me didn't intrude in my lungs.

A voice spoke over the crackling of the raging flames. "Miss Swan? Honey? Excuse me, are you alright?"

I blinked, and all traces of the fire disappeared. _Poof_, like a cartoon for six-year-olds. The images were so devastatingly real these days. More frequently, I was blacking out, flashing back to the most horrible memories of my childhood. I didn't understand it. They happened at the oddest times – in line at the department store in the mall with my dad, vacuuming my bedroom floor, and – most recently – in the office of my new school, talking with the receptionist about my new schedule in my new school, in my new town.

In my new everything.

"Miss Swan, perhaps you should see the nurse," Mrs. Cope suggested.

_Doctors. Medication. Treatment. Vulnerability. _

"No, no," I rushed out as pictures of hospital beds covered in blood with ripped sheets flashed before my eyes. "No, I'm fine. Just . . . it's been a long morning, ya now? My dad was hesitant to send me here today, and that had be second guessing myself, and then I got lost on my way here, and –"

"A trip to the nurse would really do you good then, don't you agree, honey? It would let you clear your head."

_Needles. Pills. Germs. Death. _

"No," I whispered, feeling the panic set in. She wouldn't force me to go, would she? She _couldn't_. Did she have that power? She was just the school secretary . . .

"Miss Swan, is there something you need to talk about?" Mrs. Cope asked. "The school guidance counselor is very fit to discuss problems that teenagers are having."

_"Miss Swan, do you need to talk?"_

Mrs. Cope's voice was replaced with that of my therapist back in Arizona, before my dad decided that we needed to get away from the bad memories of Phoenix and move to Forks, Washington. I had hated that man – he was pushy, always wanting to know my business. I wanted to punch him. He didn't know what I was feeling – he didn't care. He just stared at my chest the whole hour while throwing random questions at me.

_"Miss Swan, I'm here to listen," _he had said once, his eyes trained to my camisole. I'd pulled at my top, my gaze shifting from the wall, to the floor, to the ceiling. His hand on my knee had sent me running for the door.

Talking about my feelings just wasn't worth dealing with that pervert.

"She's been sitting like that for about five minutes," a woman was saying to my right. "We were discussing her classes, and her gaze went blank, and then she started to sweat, and she wouldn't go to the nurse, she just flat out refused – oh, what's happening? What do we do?"

"Have you tried shaking her out of it? Tapping her shoulder?" A new, higher pitched female's voice cut in.

"I've tried _everything, _Claire!" Mrs. Cope said frantically. "I know she didn't want to go to the nurse, but I called Shelly anyways. Oh, but they're blood typing in the sophomore biology classes today, and you know how some kids get, so she's busy and can't make it for a little while. Should I call an ambulance?"

"I don't know," the woman named Claire said. She sounded as if she was close, but I didn't see her. I couldn't see anything. Everything was black. I tried to open my mouth to speak, to say that I was fine, that I didn't need to go see a doctor by any means –

_Blood. Sadness. Grief. _

Just when I thought I was going to pull out of it, the blackness sucked me back in. With each flashback, the engulfment and sadness took me under even further. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, I couldn't move. I was tied down to the chair that I had been seated on as the two women worried about around me.

"Perhaps we should ask one of the Cullens to call their father?" Claire suggested.

"You want me to ask a _student _for help?" Mrs. Cope made a sound of disgust. "I don't think so. That's highly frowned upon by Darrel."

Darrel . . . Darrel . . . I knew that name. Mr. Darrel Greene – the principal at my new high school. Was that were I was? At school? What was happening?

"That's it," Mrs. Cope said. "I'm calling an ambulance. This is ridiculous."

"Wait, wait," a third voice, another belonging to a female, cut in. "Edward says he knows a little about blackouts like these."

"Margie, I told you not to – hello, Edward, dear," she said, giggling like a loon.

I heard all of this through a haze as my mind, struggled with what was real and what was a memory. My brain fought to bring me back to reality, but never succeeded until –

"Isabella?"

Until I heard his voice.

I blinked.

The adults in the room sighed a huge sigh of relief.

I'm surprised I noticed that, because I was trained on _his _eyes.

Edward.

"Isabella," he repeated, his velvet voice wrapping around my name like a blanket. His lips curled up in a smile as his topaz eyes trapped me in his own world.

I couldn't breathe all of a sudden. I couldn't speak. I couldn't feel anything else in the room. But this time, it wasn't a blackout. It was him.

Edward.

"Isabella?" a woman's voice asked to me, right next to my ear. Perhaps she was leaning over the back of the couch. "Sweetie, you must go to the nurse."

Edward.

"Isabella Swan," the nagging voice repeated. "Can you hear me? Are you listening to me?"

Edward.

"Miss Swan!" the woman – Mrs. Cope, my mind remembered – snapped at me. "Let's go, Edward, dear, let's get her to Mrs. Deon."

Edward. He was all I could think about. All I could see. All I could hear. I heard nothing of her words, none of it made sense, until she said his name.

"Edward," I whispered.

I hadn't noticed before, but his arm had lain down on the couch next to mine, and my fingers were tightly wrapped around his bicep. I swallowed and took a deep breath, inhaling his scent – honey and dryer sheets.

"Isabella," he responded, blinking down at me. He was so _tall_ . . . "Isabella, do you need help?"

"Bella," I corrected. "I like Bella."

"Bella," he tested, pondering over it a bit. "Yes, that's nice."

I smiled.

"Miss Swan, I do think that you should see the nurse," Mrs. Cope interrupted.

The word hit me again, a blow to my stomach. Nurse. I closed my eyes for a second, waiting for the panic that I knew was coming, but my hand was still wrapped around Edward's arm, and his scent was surrounding my senses. The images and phrases that usually flashed through my mind didn't come.

Seeing as I was watching Edward's eyes, I noticed that they grew very dark and angry at her input. "Bella doesn't _want _to visit the nurse, Mrs. Cope," he said calmly, politely. His eyes slid from my gaze to above my head, his eyebrows rising in a friendly gesture. "I think that we should trust her judgment when she says that she doesn't need to go. Don't you, ma'am?"

Mrs. Cope's eyes blinked – once, twice, three times, and she gasped. "Oh . . . um . . . y-yes, that's . . . yes, I'm sure she knows what's good for her." Her hands clasped themselves in front of her and she offered me an almost-genuine smile. "Shall we continue with your registration, dear?"

My eyes flashed to Edward. He was looking at me, too, his arm remaining where it had been for however-many minutes. The thought of him leaving literally brought pain to my chest. I pressed the hand not clutching onto him to my heart and gasped.

He seemed to understand. "Mrs. Cope, I don't think I should leave quite yet. Maybe I should stay and make sure that Bella is really okay, just in case something else happens."

"You must go back to class, Edward, I cannot keep you here any longer," she insisted, side-stepping the woman named Margie and opening the door that led to the office lobby. "Back to class for you. Mrs. Leonetti will sign your pass."

Edward didn't move, even as my fingers slipped from his wrist and fisted in my shirt. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Are you missing an exam that you don't want to take?" Mrs. Cope asked. Her hand slipped from the door as she fought hard not to make eye contact with Edward. Perhaps it had something to do with the way he had convinced her that the nurse wasn't a good idea. She had budged quite easily after he had gazed at her, though it was not in a flirtatious way. "Or maybe an oral presentation?" she added, crossing her arms over her chest and finally turning her head to meet his eyes. She blushed a bright red a moment later and looked at the carpet beneath her feet.

"Of course not, Mrs. Cope," he responded calmly. "You can't possibly think that I would use Bella as an excuse to miss class. I'm simply thinking about what is best for her health. I won't be a bother. I'll simply sit next to her until the registration is complete and I will show her to her second period class. Perhaps it is the same one that I am in."

"Oh, Edward, she's a sophomore," Mrs. Cope breathed, and was that a hint of jealousy that I detected in her voice? "You are a senior. She wouldn't be in any of your classes."

"Then maybe her class is in the general direction that mine is in," he snapped. His face was completely passive but the quiver in his throat as he swallowed told me that he was quickly losing his patience. "I can stand here all day and argue, Mrs. Cope, or we can get this over with and Bella and I can be on our way to education."

When he said my name, my heart leaped, and his gaze snapped down to me as if he had heard it. My mouth gapped open. In Phoenix, the students wouldn't dare to talk to a teacher the way he was. It made me nervous, but even though I had just met him, I already knew that he wasn't afraid to speak his mind. He radiated a calm yet powerful personality.

"This argument is unnecessary," he continued when the woman remained silent. "I've seen cases like Bella's before – she doesn't need any more stress or agitation. I suggest that we both just allow her to complete her registration into this school and be on her way."

Mrs. Cope swallowed loudly. "I suppose – since your father is the best doctor in the town – that I shall have to agree with you."

_Doctor_. His father was the town's doctor.

Of course.

I looked into his bright, topaz eyes and willed the terrible images and thoughts to stay away.

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**Author's Note: **

**I like to do this thing at the end of my chapters where I give my favorite line from the chapter and ask for yours. So, here's my favorite line. When you write it in a review, please use the format that I've used in the chapter so that I don't get confused. :) I call it a 'Quote Me'. **

**My favorite line from this chapter is when Edward says: **

"**You can't possibly think that I would use Bella as an excuse to miss class. I'm simply thinking about what is best for her health."**

**What's your favorite line? Quote me!**

**Thanks for reading, tune in next week. **


	2. Chapter Two

**Yes, I realize that this chapter is a day early. I decided that Mondays were a weird day to update, so I'm going to be doing it on Sundays. **

**Disclaimer - I do not own the Twilight Saga.**

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**Chapter Two of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

Edward stayed as Mrs. Cope continued with entering me into the school's records. She printed my class schedule and highlighted the best ways for me to get to and from each one. She gave me my student ID card and with a warm smile, sent me off into the halls just as the bell dismissing everyone to third period rang. The meeting ran a little longer than we had expected, taking up the entire second period.

I stepped out into the crowded halls of Forks High School, but I didn't walk alone. Edward stood close beside me, his hand hovering above the small of my back. I looked up at him, my eyes squinting as the sunlight streaming in from a nearby window pierced them. He smiled sweetly down at me, one side of his lips curling up and the other staying down, making it a crooked grin. It was adorable.

"Your third class is in the room beside mine," he said softly, his eyes scanning the sidewalks that the students of the school were trudging on. "I'll show you the way."

He nudged me to walk beside him as we weaved our way through the massive group of teenagers. His eyes were locked on the forests that surrounded the school, and I didn't understand why. When I called out his name, claiming his attention, he grinned down at me again and assured me that everything was fine.

We walked down the halls that lined the classrooms in silence, his eyes now watching me as mine watched the floor beneath my feet, avoiding the stairs and glances that we were receiving. When we arrived outside the door to my English room, Edward leaned against the wall as his books dangled in his left arm. "Bella, I know this might sound a little . . ." he glanced away, licking his lips and swallowed twice. ". . . soon for me to ask you this, but . . . might you consider having lunch with me?"

"Today?" I muttered, and immediately regretted it. Now I sounded like an idiot.

"Today . . . or every day," he suggested. "I hope you don't find this odd, but I think you are the most beautiful girl that I've ever laid eyes on. I would like to get to know you better."

It was a cheesy line from a romance movie that he'd most likely seen with an ex-girlfriend – or maybe his current girlfriend, if he was a player – but I was willing to give it a shot. He was single until proven in-a-relationship. "Sounds like fun," I declared. "But . . . aren't you worried that you'll be ridiculed for it?"

His eyebrows crunched together. "For what?"

"I'm a sophomore." He stared. "You're a senior." He blinked. "You have to be, what, eighteen?"

"I'm seventeen," he corrected.

"I'm sixteen," I informed him, glad to be proving a point, but sad that my point was stacking my chances of ever dating him against me. Why had I said something? Why hadn't I just let it go instead of bringing this small detail to his attention?

But he didn't respond the way I thought he would have. He raised an eyebrow as the corners of his lips turned up. "Why would that bother me, Bella?"

I frowned. "Isn't that . . . I mean . . . well, I mean, you'll turn eighteen by the time this school year is over, and I've already aged for the duration of this year. I won't turn seventeen until September." I looked away from his steady gaze, horrified that I had made a fool of myself after assuming that the activities that are frowned upon in Arizona are the same here in Washington.

"People will talk," he agreed, and I mentally sighed, relieved. I hadn't assumed the incorrect. "Even though it's technically only a year age difference, I'll probably be called a cradle-robber and you'll be called . . . well, let's not start throwing around nicknames, but –"

"I'll see you at lunch, Edward."

He smiled. "I'll see you before then, Bella."

I blinked up at him, unable to break the eye contact that we were having. We would be separated soon, and that thought wasn't a pleasant one. I didn't him to leave – and that want is a scary one. I'd just met him . . . how could I have grown so . . . so . . . clingy . . . so soon? "What do you mean by that?"

"It's my job to show you to your classes," he said innocently. "I'll be standing right here when this class is over." He glanced above my head to the clock that was located on the boring gray walls with majorly cracked paint. "You'd better get in there. Class starts in approximately a minute and a half."

My eyes swept around the campus of the school. A few students lingered here and there, buying bottles of water from the multiple machines or shoving books in a locker.

"Bella?"

I blinked. "I'll see you . . . after class," I mumbled incoherently. "Um, bye." Everything was so different here – less strict. There was _much _more time in-between classes than there was allowed in Phoenix.

"Goodbye, Bella," Edward chuckled. "Have a good class. Go get an education."

"I'll try my best." It was extremely easy to joke with him. I wasn't nervous, I wasn't thinking about my responses. They were just flowing out of my mouth freely, and they were complete sentences. It was an odd thing for me to realize.

He turned on his heel, shifting his books into his other hand, and glided through the door of the classroom right next to mine. I missed him the moment he was out of my sight.

I blinked, shaking my head and walking into my own room. There was a teacher standing at the chalkboard, writing something about a novel that I remembered reading in the eighth grade. Perhaps schools in Washington were a little behind the ones in Phoenix. "Um, excuse me?"

The man at the board stopped writing and looked over at me over his shoulder, the piece of chalk in his hand staying where it was. "May I help you?"

"I'm Bella Swan," I said. Then I realized that Mrs. Cope had seemed to know me by my full name so I added, "Isabella." Was there another new student that he was expecting? Didn't he know that I would have to be given a textbook, an assigned seat, some kind of direction?

His eyes widened and the piece of chalk slid down the board with a loud screech that made me flinch. "New student? Impossible."

I frowned. It was entirely possible that my teacher was a moron. "Um . . ." What could I say to that?

"But you . . . it's not . . . what's the date?" he stammered, frantically glancing at the many textbooks and papers on his desk.

"It's the fifteenth of November," I said.

He blinked. "No, it isn't."

Was he serious? "Um, yes. Yes, it is."

His eyes searched frantically around the room. "Newton!" he called to a boy in the third row of desks. "What's the date?"

The boy – Newton – repeated the same date that I had.

"No, it can't be!"

This man had to be insane. "Um, Sir, do I need a textbook or –"

"Just sit in the desk in the back corner, take this book –" he shoved a copy of Harper Lee's _To Kill A Mockingbird _in my hands "– and follow along as best you can, okay? I'm big on class participation points, so the sooner you can start asking and answering questions, the better. No cell phones, no gum – same rules as all the other teachers have told you, I'm sure?"

I shrugged. "This is the first class I've attended today."

"Of _course_ it is," he mumbled, almost to himself, turning back to the board. "Hurry up, now, take your seat, I'm starting class."

I turned, slightly confused, and trudged my way to the back of the room to take my seat. There was a blonde girl next to me, staring at me, all smiles. "Hi, there!" she whispered when I sat down. She glanced up at the teacher who had yet to tell me his name – I would have to look it up on my schedule – and leaned closer when she saw that he wasn't looking at the class. "I'm Melissa. Melissa Grant. It's _so_ nice to meet you! Everyone's just been so excited – this school hasn't seen a new student since . . . the nineteenth century! Not including the freshmen, of course, because it's a small town and everyone knows _everyone _even thought this is the high school and they were previously in the junior high down the road, but –"

"I'm Bella," I introduced myself, looking away from her to read what the teacher had written. I was worried that if I didn't interrupt her soon, she would have never stopped talking. "Hey, what's this teacher's name?"

"So everyone's just so – oh, he's Mr. Cahlahan – excited to meet you, I bet you'll have a great time making all kinds of new friends!"

Melissa Grant: too happy.

"Um, yeah, but listen . . . I gotta pay attention so I can catch up," I lied. I'd already read this book, but my right ear was about to start bleeding. "So –"

"What lunch are you in?" she demanded, smiling sweetly.

"What?"

"_Lunch_," she emphasized. "Are you in first lunch? Second? Third?"

"Um . . . D, all of the above?"

"Lemme see your schedule," she insisted, reaching her hand across the small isle between us and wiggling her fingers. Her pencil dropped to the floor, but she didn't seem to notice. She studied the slip of paper and grinned. Oh, God, please tell me she isn't –

"We're in the same lunch!" she whispered. "I'll find you, and we'll talk some more, and I'll introduce you to my friends!"

I remembered Edward. "Um . . . I already promised someone that I'd spend lunch with them."

Her face fell. "Who?"

I swallowed. "Um . . . E-Edward Cullen."

Her eyes widened, but she said nothing as Mr. Cahlahan called her name. "How about you, Miss Grant? Do you know?"

"I'm sorry, Sir, what was the question?" Her face was completely red, and I fought back a smile.

"The main character, Miss Grant," he said. "What do you think she was thinking while stumbling around in the dark, hearing the sounds of a fight without being able to see it?"

I didn't listen to her answer; I zoned out after that.

…

Edward was exactly where he had told me he would be after the bell rang to dismiss me from English class. I was awkwardly balancing my backpack on my left shoulder and the multiple packets that Mr. Cahlahan had shoved at me as I passed him in my arms. Melissa had resumed talking my ear off, only now she was on my left side, giving my right ear a break.

"It's really too bad that English is the only class we have together, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, we can still be best friends and all, but it'll be a lot harder for us to get to know each other. We'll have to get together after school, and –"

I hadn't been watching her, but looking at the many kids wandering around the halls, waiting for a chance to safely weave my way through them to the other side so that I could get to Edward. So when she stopped talking abruptly, I glanced over at her and followed her gaze. "What's the matter?" "Edward Cullen," she said, her voice dropping from talking loudly to a soft whisper, "is staring right at you. I think he's waiting for you . . . that's so weird!" She glanced at me. "Oh, I didn't mean – it's not that you aren't pretty, because you so are, but it's just that Edward doesn't . . . show interest in anyone."

"Meaning?"

"He doesn't date." The voice didn't belong to Melissa. I turned to see a short girl with straight brown hair standing next to me. She was carrying about five textbooks and a few notebooks, and her eyes were trained on a small touch-screen cellphone. She looked up at me, but didn't smile. "Mel, you know this girl?"

"I sure do," she responded, but the girl cut her off before she could say another word.

"I can never tell, ya know?" she said to me, her eyes drifting back to her thumbs as they tapped rapidly on the phone's screen. "She just talks to _everyone_. Friendly, but a little too friendly, I think. She knows this –" she looked at Melissa – "but she doesn't care. You just like to make friends, don't ya, Mel?"

Melissa nodded, and smiled at me.

"I'm Jessica," the brown-haired girl said, but didn't offer a last name or look up from her phone. "Sorry if she bothered you."

"Bella's my friend," Melissa protested.

"Bella?" Melissa had claimed Jessica's attention again. "Swan? The new girl? Huh," she muttered. "Why didn't I realize it? No wonder you didn't look familiar. Anyway, what's this about Edward Cullen?"

"He wants to sit with Bella at lunch today," Melissa giggled.

My eyes flashed to where Edward was standing, waiting for me. The clock was ticking, and I knew that we'd have to get to class soon. I didn't want to make him late, but he seemed perfectly content leaning against a locker, gazing at the forest beside the school out a window. "Look, um, I should probably –"

Apparently, Jessica liked to interrupt people. "Don't get your heart set on him, Swan. He won't stick around, and if he does, you won't be able to trust him. C'mon, Mel. We're gonna be late."

He won't hang around and he's not reliable. Did Edward have a history of 'loving and leaving' his girlfriends? Did he like to have multiple girlfriends at once? Or did he not like to give the title 'girlfriend' out at all?

I had no time to think on that fact right now. Edward was still waiting to show me to my next class, and the time between classes was dwindling. I crossed the hall and met Edward's eyes. "Sorry," I muttered. "Apparently I made some new . . . friends."

He smiled. "I noticed. But Jessica Stanley isn't exactly the best friend that you could have."

I looked at the sidewalk beneath my feet as he pushed away from the lockers, shifted his books once again to his opposite arm, and began to walk in the direction of my next class – Geometry with Mr. Baker in room two hundred twenty-five. "Why not? She seems like a nice girl to me." That was a lie, but maybe he would explain Jessica's warning without me having to ask. Perhaps she was just a heartbroken ex-girlfriend trying to keep him from having happiness.

"She's . . ." he paused. "How do I say this while remaining a gentleman? She . . . she likes to . . . create drama, start rumors. Much of what she says can't be believed."

"Well, that makes me feel better," I blurted without thinking. Perhaps my ability to speak freely with Edward wasn't as good of a talent as I had originally thought. Now he would ask me what she had said about him.

"Ah," he murmured. "She probably told you that I'm not to be trusted, that I'm not worth your time."

Or he would already know. "Um, yeah. How did you know that?"

He squinted, hesitating. I'd caught him by surprise. Was he hesitating because she was not only repeating her story to everyone, but it was also true? Or was it something else entirely? He looked as if he'd revealed a secret he didn't want me to know, but I didn't get it. He shifted his books to his other hand and back again before saying, "She says the same thing to everyone. She told my brother, Jasper, the same story once – proof that she's not very brilliant. Obviously he would know what was true and what was false."

"But it's nice to know it's not true, just the same. I mean, it's nice to have you confirm that she's usually not truthful. I didn't believe her anyway." That might have been a slight lie. I'd been conflicted.

"Well, _some _things might be correct," he countered.

My stomach dropped a little. "T-that's not important," I stuttered. "I don't . . . I'm not big on gossip."

He stopped walking momentarily. "You are a horrible liar, Bella."

I looked up to his topaz eyes, stunned. "That was a bold statement."

His eyebrows shot up. "My apologies."

We walked in silence for a few moments, passing the library, the nurse's office, and the rooms with numbers in the hundreds. Finally, when we turned a corner and I saw the number two hundred twenty-one on top of a door, followed by two hundred twenty-two above the door next to it, and so on. It wasn't until I was ready to enter my classroom that Edward cleared his throat. "I hope that what Jessica has said didn't change your mind about lunch."

I shook my head. "She only said that you can't be . . . trusted. Just like you assumed."

"Oh."

_Oh_? What did _that _mean? "Oh?" I wanted him to deny it _so _badly, because he'd been right; I _had _lied earlier when I said gossip wasn't important. I wasn't good at choosing between fact and fiction.

"Well," he shrugged. "See? Now, that's why you must be careful about what you believe when it comes out of her mouth. Sometimes what she says is entirely false."

Relief flooded though me, letting me breath normally once again. "It's nice to know that _that _was a false accusation," I said.  
"Actually, what she said _this _time was entirely true," he said lightly. "I'll see you after class, Bella."

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**My favorite part of this chapter is: **

"I'm Bella," I introduced myself, looking away from her to read what the teacher had written. I was worried that if I didn't interrupt her soon, she would have never stopped talking. "Hey, what's this teacher's name?"

"So everyone's just so – oh, he's Mr. Cahlahan – excited to meet you, I bet you'll have a great time making all kinds of new friends!"

Melissa Grant: too happy.

**What's your Quote Me? Let me know in a review. **

**Thanks for reading. Tune in again next week. **


	3. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga.**

* * *

**Chapter Three of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

Edward's words haunted me the entire Geometry class. Jessica had told me that Edward couldn't be trusted, and he had agreed. But what did that mean? Was he trying to warn me that he would eventually break my heart without actually saying it out loud? Was he trying to scare me off? Was there some hidden message that he was sending me? Or was he just pushing me away because he's one of those guys who are scared of being in a relationship? He'd made the first move by asking me to have lunch with him. Surely he wasn't already wanting to take that action back . . .

"Now, how many of you actually _tried _the homework last night?" Mr. Baker said, and I focused back onto what he was teaching. "Hmm? Anyone? Or did everyone do as Mr. Newton did and gave up after writing down the first problem? C'mon, people, we're almost halfway through this school year! If you want to pass this class, you _have _to do your work. Homework assignments count towards your grades, remember?" He put the chalk that he had been writing with down and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the blackboard. "By a show of hands, how many of you are juniors?"

I was seated in the middle row of the classroom out of the five, three seats back from the front. I could see about half of the class without turning around in my seat, and out of the first two rows there were only three sophomores. The rest had raised their hands to show that they were in the eleventh grade.

Mr. Baker grinned. "And _why _are all of you taking this class that was meant for sophomores?" No one responded. I wasn't sure anyone was even breathing at this point. His lecture didn't seem to have an ending in the near future. "Because you all _failed _last year, that's why!" he continued. "So the next time you don't do your homework, _think _about the suffering that you will be putting your grades through. Guess what, everyone's getting a big, fat, _zero _in the grade book. Except for Miss Swan – _today_, anyway." His eyes focused on me. "I suggest you don't follow in your classmates' footsteps, Isabella."

Complaints and whines echoed through the room, but Mr. Baker just laughed. "You all should have done your homework. Don't complain; it's your own fault." He picked up a stack of worksheets and began handing them out to the kids in the front row, who then passed them back to the kids behind them, and so on. "I advise you all do tonight's homework. It's a simple worksheet that'll take you _maybe _ten minutes. Worth twenty points."

The same blonde kid that my English teacher had called on just last period raised his hand slowly, as if he were afraid that he was going to get bit by a snake or injured in some other way. "Mr. Baker?"

The teacher sighed. "Yes, Mr. Newton?" I wondered what his first name was. We had two classes together and I hadn't heard anyone say it once.

"Um, I didn't just write down the first problem of the homework," the kid said. "For the record, I had my name written down on the top, as well as the textbook page and the numbers of the assignment."

Mr. Baker stared blankly at the Newton boy for a moment before saying, "It's still a zero, Michael," and turning to walk back to his desk. The class erupted in giggles and chuckles when we saw the back of our teacher's suit had been tainted with yellow chalk after he had leaned against the board. I covered my mouth with my hand as I ducked my head to hide my laughter. "What is everyone laughing at?" he demanded, and then caught sight of himself in the mirror hanging on the wall to his left. His eyes widened as he began desperately swiping at his back, but had no success in removing the yellow powder on his clothing. The class laughed harder.

The bell rang then and everyone stood and began to gather their books and bags. I pulled my light purple tote bag off of the back of my chair and picked up my copy of _To Kill a Mocking Bird_ and the new Geometry textbook that I had most recently acquired, along with the multi-colored notebooks that I had brought with me – everyone knows that notebooks are an obvious requirement in high school.

"Miss Swan," Mr. Baker called as I began to follow the other students who were filing out of the room. "Do your best on tonight's homework. But I suggest that you try." His cold stare warned me not to be like my classmates, and I swallowed, nodding my head, and kept walking.

I stepped out of the room and onto the sidewalk, glancing left and right for Edward, but he wasn't in sight. I vaguely wondered if he had thought about what he had said before and was now embarrassed. Or maybe he just didn't want to talk to me anymore. Or maybe he was with his girlfriend that he hadn't mentioned before. Or maybe –

I shook my head at myself. Why was I letting him get to me? I shouldn't be thinking this hard about Edward Cullen – after all, I had just met him. Maybe there was another boy who could show me around – or there was always Melissa Grant.

I looked down at my schedule. The classrooms seemed to go in order according to their number – which made sense. I was going to room three hundred thirteen. I looked at the room to my right – number two hundred twenty-four. I looked to my left – two hundred and twenty-six. Process of elimination, I figured that I should head to the left to get to the three hundreds.

So I began walking in that direction. The students walking in the opposite direction rudely smacked into me, bumping my tote bag around on my shoulder and making me drop my English novel a few times. I didn't let it bother me, but I did notice that they hadn't done that when Edward was walking beside me – the other students had treated me with the respect that they treated every other student on the property instead of looking at me like I was the new girl. But now I was alone, and that respect was gone. I decided to keep my eyes on the ugly green and yellow tiles of the floor.

I brushed it off and kept walking. The big blue numbers above the classroom doors were inching their way closer to the three hundreds. I smiled to myself, proud for getting myself to my next class by myself on my first day of school. But my smile quickly faded.

I found myself standing at the end of the hall. I couldn't walk straight anymore unless I wanted to try and walk through a wall or climb through the window. And the room number above the last door was two hundred and sixty-seven.

"Oh, crap," I whispered. And I'd thought I was doing so well. There were three things that my mother had given to me – her inability to cook, her brown hair and eyes, and her bad sense of direction. It turns out my bad sense of direction _hadn't _gone away as I had originally hoped.

Thinking about my mother brought on a sadness that I wanted to avoid at all costs, so I pushed the memories of her that threatened to bubble to the surface of my brain and focused on the problem at hand.

I turned around. Most of the students that had been on the sidewalk a moment ago were now gone – probably because class was about to start. It had taken me longer than I had thought it would to walk all the way down here. I realized that the three hundreds must be located on another wing of the connected classrooms. I closed my eyes, wishing that I would have just kept my mouth shut and not scared Edward off. I was alone now.

"Hey!"

I jumped, swinging my head in the direction of the voice. Jogging towards me was a tall, pale, black-haired boy with absolutely no books in his hand. He was grinning widely at me, making me grin back, but on the inside, I was skeptical. He didn't look like a student here, but –

"Hey, there," the boy said as he skidded to a stop in front of me. "You look a little lost."

I bit my lip. "Uh, yeah. This guy was supposed to help me get around the school, but he . . . ditched me." I looked down at my feet, embarrassed.

"Awe, he's a jerk," the boy said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Where ya going?"

I told him where my American History class was located, and he nodded. "That's . . . not near my class, but I'll show you where it is anyway. It's _way _over there." He pointed vaguely in the direction that I had come, but grinned. "C'mon, follow me." He took two steps before stopping and saying, "I'm Eric, by the way."

"Bella," I told him, falling into step behind him. He was a fast walker, so I was basically jogging to keep up with him because of my naturally short legs – not inherited from my mother _or _my father; I guess I just always wanted to be different. I probably looked like an idiot, so I was glad that there was no one around to see.

Eric liked to talk; I found that out very quickly. He talked about his pregnant cat, his new car, his lack of a girlfriend – I'm pretty sure he was hitting on me during _that _topic of conversation – his love of seafood, his hatred of movie theaters, and all the way to his unusual birthmark on his lower back.

Just as I though he was going to lift up his shirt and show it to me – gag – we turned a corner and I saw the big, bold letters above the door read _three hundred thirty. _I sighed, relieved. It turned out that I all I had to do after leaving Geometry was turn _right _instead of left. From there I would walk to the end of that row of classrooms, turn right again, and walk about halfway down _that _row of classrooms.

While Eric was walking about ten steps ahead of me and talking about as loud as a herd of elephants, the bell had rang. I expected him to be upset about being late for his own class, but when I asked him about it, he said that he wasn't worried about being tardy.

"My teachers are used to me walking in late," he chuckled. "And today, I have a legit explanation. You know where your fifth period class is, and I get to miss about ten minutes of Chemistry. It's a win-win, ya know?"

I nodded, pretending to agree, but what I really was thinking was that he was a lunatic and I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. "Yeah . . . I guess."

"So you have lunch next, right?"

_Please don't ask me to sit with you, _I thought. _You're weird, and you don't care about school. I like boys who _care _about their education. Smart boys. Boys with common sense. Boys that are going to graduate high school in this century. _

Maybe my thoughts were a little rude. But at least I didn't say them out loud.

"Um, yeah, I guess," I mumbled. My classroom was _right there _– I was looking right at the mahogany door. Did this boy not understand that I was _late _and I needed to get into that _room_?

"Well, when you walk out of this classroom, you're gonna wanna go back that way, turn right, and keep going straight, and then you'll see the café. Okay?"

Directions. That was helpful. "Uh, yeah," I said, smiling up at him for a moment before turning back towards the door. "Thanks, Eric."

"Anytime," he responded seriously. "I mean it. _Anytime_."

"Uh . . . yeah." I pushed open the door to my history class. As expected, the teacher's teaching stopped abruptly and every eye of every student was locked on me. Awkwardly, I shifted my weight back and forth as I introduced myself. "I'm Bella Swan," I muttered. "Um . . . I got lost on my way here because my guide didn't show up to show me where to go, so –"

The woman standing at the blackboard was writing with yellow chalk. I had to fight back a chuckle when I thought about what had happened to Mr. Baker with that same color. She wasn't a very old woman, maybe in her thirties. She was tall, taller than I was, so she must be taller than five foot four inches. She wore a long, yellow and orange skirt that almost touched the ground with a matching yellow blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a small bun perched on the top of her head. It jiggled when she turned to face me after completing the words that she had been writing when I walked in.

"That's what I assumed," the woman at the blackboard interrupted sweetly. She smiled at me. "Hi, Bella, I'm Mrs. Hathaway." She waltzed towards me, her heeled shoes clicking softly on the tiled floor. "This is your textbook for this class. If you could get a book cover for it by the end of the week, that would be great. They keep the front cover protected, you know?" She handed me the book along with a packet and a separate worksheet. "This worksheet is what the class did last night for homework, and it'll probably help you get caught up on what we're learning about – the first World War. I won't collect it from you, but it might be something that you want to look at. This packet has all of our class work for this chapter, and some readings that aren't in our textbook. You'll need your textbook every day, and if you don't have it, you'll lose participation points. You can just take that empty seat right there in the second row, and that'll be your assigned seat for the rest of this semester. Just follow along as best you can. Page five hundred fifty-three in your textbook."

I was relieved. This was a teacher who was prepared to tell me the information that I needed to know; This was a teacher who was prepared _period_. I smiled at the woman and walked towards the seat she had pointed out. It was located next to a window and a small book shelf, and I wondered if I would need to bring a small jacket with me to this class when it began to snow in the winter – I might get cold.

It was extremely difficult to focus on what Mrs. Hathaway was saying. My classmates were extremely fidgety and loud. The kid behind me – a chubby boy with too-long brown hair that smelled like beef – kept kneeing me in the small of my back because his legs were too long to fit properly under the desk. The girl in front of me was probably about six feet tall, I had to lean to the side to see what was being written on the board. Some boy in the back sounded like he was hacking up a lung, and the girl next to me with short, black hair kept clicking her pen on and off repeatedly after she wrote each _word _down on her notebook. It made me want to reach over and snap that pink pen in half.

"Now, there are two minutes left in class," Mrs. Hathaway informed us, because she had covered up the clock above the door to avoid _clock watchers_ and therefore we had no idea what time it was without the use of cell phones. "You have homework." The satisfied sighs that had erupted when she revealed the time bubbled into groans of sadness. "Yes, yes, I know, I'm so evil," she said, dramatically rolling her eyes. She clicked her way over to the front row students, plopping worksheets down on their desks. "Pass these back. It's a simple worksheet, people. I'm collecting it, so I suggest you do it." The bell rang. "Class dismissed."

The class hustled and bustled around me, gathering their books and bags and homework. Conversations picked up as the rows began to empty out. Mrs. Hathaway was standing at the door, grinning at students as they left, handing them a cheerful "Have a nice day" or "See you tomorrow". I picked up my tote bag once again and hoisted it over my shoulder. Just as I was turning to walk out the door, a pale-white hand shot out in front of me.

"Hi!" a cheerful voice said, and I about had a heart attack, thinking it was Melissa and I was going to get stuck eating lunch with her. Not that there was anything wrong with Melissa . . . she was simply too giddy and happy. But it wasn't her – I looked up to meet the eyes of the pink-pen-clicker. "Hi," she repeated, "I'm Alice." Her eyes were wide and topaz, and I forced myself not to picture Edward's face, because those eyes . . . they were exactly the same as –

"Are you okay?" Alice asked, leaning closer to peer up at me curiously. "You look like you've seen a ghost!" She giggled as if it was the funniest thing ever.

"Um . . . no, I'm . . . I mean, yeah, I'm fine," I mumbled, shaking my head of the images of Edward and my confused state "I'm Bella."

"Bella Swan!" she exclaimed. "Yes, I've heard of you. You're so pretty, you know that? Has anyone ever told you that? They should, because you are just _glowing_." She stopped, grinned widely at me, and grabbed my arm, even though there was still a desk in between us. "C'mon, let's go to lunch!"

"How . . . how do you know that I have lunch now?"

She paused, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "Lucky guess," she finally muttered, yanking gently on the top of my arm again. "C'mon, if we get to lunch late, I'll have less time to introduce you to my family!"

My eyebrows rose. "You have a lot of family in this school?"

"Well, _technically_," she sighed, "I only have my two brothers, but Emmett has a girlfriend who he absolutely loves, and I have my boyfriend. He's close enough to family to me." She laughed, somehow juggling all of her five textbooks and a countless number of notebooks in one hand, plus a purse that looked to be packed up to the zipper.

We exited the classroom and I couldn't help but glance around for Edward on the off chance he'd come back to help me, but then I remembered that he wouldn't have known what classroom I'd been in after fourth period. I trudged alongside Alice, laughing along with her at her excited behavior. "And what about your other brother?"

She rolled her eyes. "He doesn't have a girlfriend. He's been holding out on that _special someone_. Cliché, right?"

I ignored that. There was nothing wrong with waiting for the right person. That was what I was doing, was it not? "Um . . . I don't know . . . not really, I mean –"

She ignored me. "But that's Edward for you." Her bag smacked against her hip when she suddenly slowed her pace. "But you know him already. I bet you picked up on that."

I stopped altogether and Alice almost pulled my arm out of the socket. "E-Edward?" She couldn't be talking about Edward Cullen. How would she possibly know that he had been my guide for about two classes? I was sure if she had seen us around the campus, she wouldn't have been able to keep herself from coming over to introduce herself. She was much too excitedly happy right now. And Edward couldn't be her brother. They looked nothing alike.

My heart stopped. _The eyes_. They had the same eyes . . . I had noted that the moment I first met Alice, not five minutes ago. Could it be? Was I walking to lunch with Edward Cullen's sister? Had I not escaped eating lunch with him after all? I closed my eyes when I realized that I was going to have to face him now, after he had abandoned me. I swallowed. "Edward Cullen . . . is . . ."

"My brother," she said, nodding.

"You're Edward Cullen's sister?"

"Guilty as charged."

"That's . . ." I had no words. "Wait . . . how did you know that . . . I've already met him?" Had Edward told her that he was going to have to avoid me or something?

Alice smirked. "I just knew."

I shook my head. "That's not a legit answer. Tell me a real answer. One that I can believe."

She tugged on my arm. "C'mon, keep walking and I'll tell you." When my feet began moving again, she grinned. "You see, I have this . . . well, it's like . . . hmm. It's like –"

"Alice."

We both spun around to see a tall, blonde boy with the same topaz eyes as Alice and . . . and Edward. He wore a navy-colored button-down, long-sleeved shirt with khakis that looked like they had been ironed incorrectly about five times, what with all of the crooked creases that I could count. His arms were crossed over his chest, but his face was calm and relaxed. When Alice looked at him, he smiled like he couldn't look at her with an unhappy expression. "What are you doing?"

Alice laughed. "Relax, Jazz. I was just telling Bella about how I know that she's already met Edward."

The boy she called Jazz raised his eyebrows. "And how do you know that?"

Alice smirked again. "You know how."

"Maybe we should keep that a secret," he suggested, and I opened my mouth to protest, but Alice beat me to it.

"She wants to know," she countered. "She'll find out soon enough anyway."

I had to say, I was confused. They obviously had some sort of secret that Jazz was trying to protect, though it didn't seem like Alice had a problem with telling me. "Um, look, I don't want to cause trouble."

"Oh, Jasper just wants to _protect _me from the gossip that he thinks will sprout when I tell you," Alice snorted.

The name Jasper was just as unusual as his nickname, but I didn't say anything about it. Instead I said, "I would never spread gossip about you."

"I know that," she agreed. "You know that. Jasper knows that. He's just one of those protective boyfriends and watches over everything I do . . ." She paused. "That didn't sound good at all, did it?"

"Now she thinks I'm a controlling, possessive freak, Alice," Jasper scolded. "Thank you." He took two steps towards us, two long strides, and stuck out his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Bella Swan. I'm Jasper Whitlock."

I shook his hand. "I'm . . . Bella Swan . . ." How did one properly introduce herself if the person one was introducing oneself to already knew one's name?

Alice and Jasper laughed. "I'm really a nice guy, if you get to know me," Jasper added after his chuckling slowed.

"So let's leave it at this," Alice declared. "I have this . . . intuition. Let's get to lunch, guys."

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**My favorite line from this chapter is: **

"Now she thinks I'm a controlling, possessive freak, Alice," Jasper scolded. "Thank you."

**What's yours? **

**Thanks for reading. Please leave me a review and let me know what you think. See you all next chapter. **


	4. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga.**

* * *

**Chapter Four of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

"You've got to be kidding me." The wind-chime voice of Rosalie Hale had turned cold the moment Alice had introduced me to she and Emmett Cullen. "Alice, this is ridiculous. She can't sit here. You can't subject her to be made fun of and gossiped about just like the rest of us."

We were standing at a cafeteria lunch table located all the way in the far right corner of the café, separate from most of the other students who ate Third Lunch. I was playing with the strap of my bag as Alice and Rosalie spoke.

Alice's face fell. "She's meant to be here, Rose."

"Maybe she should have been given a choice," Rosalie insisted.

"Maybe she _wanted _to sit with us," Alice insisted. "Bella, you want to have lunch with us, don't you?"

I nodded. "Sure. I mean . . . I'd like to be friends with you guys."

"See?" Alice pointed a small, pale finger at me and nodded her head once with authority. "I told you. I win. Sit down by me, Bella. Jasper, you sit there." She directed him to the seat on the other side of her.

"Where's Edward?" Jasper asked as we all settled down and began to eat. I plucked my lunch bag out of my tote and unzipped the top to pull out my sandwich. Rosalie stared down at her lunch tray in disgust while Emmett noisily ate an apple. Jasper munched on a bag of chips, made a face, and pushed them away. Alice didn't even have a lunch in front of her. My eyebrows knotted together in confusion – why did they all seem to have an aversion to food, with the exception of Emmett? – but I ignored it.

"Oh, he got tied up this morning after third period," Emmett said. I sat up a little straighter and listened a little closer. This was the reason that Edward hadn't been there to walk me to history class. "He's been stuck in the guidance office since halfway through fourth."

"What happened?" Alice demanded, crossing her legs and leaning back in her chair. Jasper slung an arm over her shoulders.

I bit into my sandwich and said nothing, just listened and watched.

"I don't know, something about his locker partner dealing drugs," Emmett said dismissively. "They just want to make sure he isn't involved. It's not a big deal – Edward's too good of a kid to get caught with drugs."

"So _that's _why there's a police car out front," Rosalie murmured. "Makes sense."

"Aren't you in the least bit worried about Edward?" Alice pouted. She reached out and snatched her brother's apple away, turning it over two times before biting down in a spot where he hadn't. "He's my brother, and he's _your _brother, too, Emmett."

"Aw, Ali, Edward's a big boy," Emmett responded. "He knows how to take care of himself. He's innocent, and after a few questions, Principal Greene will know that, and he'll be off to class in no time. Betcha he'll be in Cal with you seventh period."

I looked up from the bag of chips I'd been struggling to open. "You're taking Calculus?"

Alice nodded. "But Emmett seems to have forgotten that Edward is a senior, and he's taking Honors Calculus ll."

"What grade are you in?" I continued, finally yanking the bag open and popping a Dorito in my mouth.

"I'm a sophomore," she said lightly, tossing me a grin before turning to peck Jasper on the cheek. "So is Rose. Jasper and Edward are seniors, and Emmett is a junior. And you're a sophomore." She giggled, and Jasper rolled his eyes, but smiled down at her when she laid her head down on his shoulder.

Emmett grinned and pointed towards the cafeteria's doors. "See, Alice? I _told _you Edward was fine. Look at him, doesn't even look spooked."

In a split second, I went from laughing along with the Cullen-Whitlock-Hale clan – and having so much fun that I'd almost forgot that we were sitting in the back of a high school cafeteria and that people were probably looking at me and wondering who the heck I was – to having my heart plummet to my stomach. Edward was coming. He had a good excuse for leaving me to fend for myself, so I knew that I couldn't be upset with him, but would it be awkward now? Would he even acknowledge me, or would he pretend I wasn't there?

"And he's still got ten minutes before class," Rosalie added, brushing her pale fingers through her long, blonde, wavy hair.

Alice grinned – I'd yet to see her stop smiling – and turned around in her chair. "Hi, Edward!"

I turned around, too, but didn't look at Edward. My eyes locked on the many stares that we were getting from the other students in the cafeteria. Almost a third of the heads in the room were turned towards us, including those of Melissa Grant and Jessica Stanley and every other person sitting at their lunch table. I whipped my head back around to face Emmett and Rosalie, trying to pretend that I didn't have the attention of so many people. The spotlight wasn't something that I was accustomed to, and it certainly wasn't something that I relished in having.

"Sorry I'm late," I heard Edward's deep, velvety voice say. On the table, his shadow was cast right over my head, and I knew he was standing right behind me. "I'm sure Emmett told you that I had a little run-in with the law."

"Yeah, you rebel," Alice teased as Jasper pulled another chair over from a table nearby. "Did they get to the bottom of it?" She finished her hijacked apple and rolled the core across the table back to her brother. Emmett made a noise of disgust and crunched his nose up.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he demanded, holding up the apple core with two fingers and staring at it with hatred.

"Throw it away," Alice ordered. "Obviously. Sit down, Edward."

"Alice, you seem to be the boss of the family," I said, finally putting my two cents into the conversation, mostly because I needed a distraction from Edward, who had plopped his chair down somewhere to my right.

"Of course she is," Jasper agreed. "No one can argue with Alice."

"Unless they want to be exposed to the evil wrath that she keeps bundled up inside," Edward whispered, his lips close to my ear. I jumped back, my head whipping around to look at him. I saw that he had wedged his chair in between my chair and the leg of the table. It was a tight squeeze, and I didn't understand why he didn't just sit in the big empty space beside his brother.

"Hey, I heard that!" Alice complained.

"You were meant to," Edward countered. His eyes slid back to me, and he smiled. "I hope you can forgive me for abandoning you. It truly wasn't my intention, and I feel absolutely awful." His sparkling topaz eyes were sad, and his lips turned down in a frown.

I blinked. "No, no, it's fine," I assured him, looking back down at my food. I had finished my chips, so I crinkled the bag together and shoved it back in my lunch box. Then I pulled out a chocolate chip cookie and took a little bite. I had to be ladylike; I could still feel Edward's eyes on me. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. "Really, it's okay. This other guy was able to give me directions to history, and Alice is in that class, so she showed me the way here, and –"

"Who was it that showed you the way to fifth period?" he interrupted.

I stopped, shocked, and leaned back a little. He was sitting awfully close . . . not that I was complaining. His cologne smelled extremely good . . . a woodsy scent mixed with a hint of mint in the background. I gave him a good look-over, and I noticed that his perfectly-combed hair now looked as if he had been frequently running his fingers through it, and his eyes were a more soft buttermilk color. I forgot what his question was. "Um . . . what?"

"Do you know who it was that escorted you to your history class, Bella?" A cliché thrill went through me when he said my name, and I sucked in a breath.

My thoughts began to panic. I knew that kid's name . . . he'd told me . . . it began with an 'A' . . . or was it an 'S'? No! It was an 'E'! Yes, that's what it was . . . um, Eli . . . Erin – no, that's a girl's name, right? – Edwin . . . I closed my eyes, embarrassed. There was way too much time elapsing. Edward must think I'm mentally challenged . . . first he had to help me this morning with my panic attack, and now I can't answer a simple question on my own? _Okay, think, Bella. What was that kid's name? . . . Oh, I got it!_

"Eric . . . something," I mumbled, realizing that he had never given me his last name. At least I had finally come up with his _first _name.

"Yorkie," he whispered, his eyes moving from my face to the plethora of students in the rest of the café. I followed his deadly gaze into the crowd and, indeed, I saw Eric sitting at a table a few feet away, laughing with a bunch of other boys.

"Is there only one Eric in this school?"

"Oh, no," Edward muttered, shaking his head. "He's just the only Eric that . . . _erm, _has the guts to . . . approach someone that they don't know, and . . ." He stopped, stuttering. "I'm sure he wasn't exactly a shy person, was he?"

He _had _tried to show me a very personal birthmark. "No, he definitely wasn't shy."

He chuckled, turning away from Eric and his friends to face his family.

". . . picked up another shift at work," Emmett was saying. "Esme was real upset this morning when I left."

"That's because Carlisle isn't around as much as he was in Alaska," Alice sighed, twirling a strand of her short, black hair around her index finger.

"Wait," I spoke up, leaning my elbows on the table, "you guys lived in Alaska? That's awesome, I've always wanted to go there, but my dad never would."

"Yeah, we lived there for about –"

Edward cleared his throat. "Five years."

Alice slapped her hands down on the table in perfect synchronization, obviously irritated. "Yes, Edward. That's what I was _going to _say," she snapped. "Why do you all assume that I'm just going to . . ." She stopped, closing her mouth, not smiling for once, and then spoke again. "I'm not just going to make up random facts about us. It's not like I was going to say we were _born _there, or something."

"You lived elsewhere before Alaska?" I had so many questions, like why everyone seemed hesitant when Alice spoke (first Jasper, now Edward) and why everyone seemed to get nervous when I asked a simple question, but because of that second one, I decided to hold my tongue, hoping that Alice wouldn't get in trouble with her brother's for answering. The Cullens' behavior was odd, but I had no room to judge, especially because of how I acted when I met Edward.

"We were all born in Maine," Emmett told me before Alice had a chance. "We moved to Alaska for dad's work when Alice turned nine. I was ten, and Edward was eleven. We all hated it, of course, because our friends were in Maine, but then we moved here two years ago, and I met Rose, and I got over it. Alice and Edward rode solo for a while, and then Alice turned fourteen and was in high school and met this pervert over here –" he nudged his head in Jasper's direction – "so that left Edward as the only loner of the family."

"Until you came along," Alice chirped.

"Alice!" Edward snapped, and I turned scarlet.

"Um . . ." Students were beginning to get up and throw away their garbage and leave the cafeteria. "Maybe we should head to class? I think lunch is almost over . . ."

Rosalie turned around in her seat to peer at the kids by the trash cans. "Look at that. Time flies when you're . . . well, this is Forks High, so it hasn't been a fun time, but you know what I mean." She picked her tray up off the table, stood up gracefully, and eyed me curiously. "You coming, or what?"

"Uh –" I stuttered, gathering my garbage up quickly. I hadn't been getting a friendly vibe from Rosalie the entire lunch period, so I hadn't been expecting her to wait for me. But nevertheless, I stood – not as gracefully, seeing as my chair flipped over on its back behind me – and followed after thanking Edward for fixing it for me.

"Um, Emmett seems like a nice guy," I said conversationally as we walked.

"He most definitely is," she agreed, tilting her tray ever so slightly to dump her untouched meal into a half-full trash can. "I'm lucky to have met him."

"Did you grow up here, Rosalie?"

"Call me Rose, please," she requested, watching me overturn my lunch box to empty the remains of my own meal into the same can. "And no, actually, I lived in Oregon until I was . . . hmm, about twelve years old. My mother . . . she passed away during my birth. My father wasn't a great one, so . . . when we moved here, and I started spending so much time with Emmett . . . he just up and left me one day while I was at school." We began to walk back to the table, but she kept talking. "He took all of his belongings and just left . . . no note, no goodbye, nothing. So I moved in with the Cullens, and I've lived with them ever since."

"You _live _with them?" Living under the same roof with a boyfriend . . . I couldn't even imagine that. What if that was me, living in the same house as Edward?

_ That's a ridiculous thought, Bella, _I scolded myself.

Rose nodded. "Jasper does, too, but that's his story to tell. They've always been very accepting. Esme couldn't handle the thought of me being alone, and I'd been dating Emmett for about a year. I was fourteen, he fifteen."

She obviously wasn't going to tell me how Jasper got his room in the Cullen household, so I didn't waste my breath. But those ages . . . they were so young to be so serious . . . "You've been dating Emmett since you were thirteen?"

"Mhm," she hummed. Now we were back in hearing range of the others, so our conversation stopped. I sat back down next to Edward and noticed that Emmett and Jasper had gotten rid of their trash and managed to return before Rosalie and I.

"May I see your schedule, Bella?" Edward asked. When I looked up at him with my silent question in my eyes, his smile faded. "That is, if I haven't been replaced as your guide?"

Understanding flooded me. "Of course you're still my guide," I assured him. "I'm sorry, I was just unclear on your intent."

Edward nodded, taking the piece of paper from me and grinning. "You're a smart girl, Bella. Taking Honors Biology as a sophomore."

"Um, well, I took Physical Science as a freshman last year in Phoenix, so this is what they signed me up for," I explained, turning crimson at his compliment.

"Well, it's funny," he said, "because that's the same class that I'm taking. The same period, too. We're in the same class, Bella." He chuckled, handing me my schedule back. "And Mrs. Cope thought we wouldn't have any. Proved her wrong, didn't we?"

"That's . . . more shockingly creepy than it is funny," I blurted, and immediately regretted it. "Not that I don't want to have a class with you, because that would be so fantastic because I already know you, and you're a very nice guy, and I –"

"I'm not a nice guy, Bella," he interjected. "You just don't know me well enough to see that."

"I'm going to pretend you aren't acting like a mysterious serial killer so we can get to class," I announced, and slapped my hand over my mouth. "Oh, my God, I did _not _just say that," I whispered, more to myself than to Edward.

"You kinda did," Alice said in my ear, and I jumped back. "Oops, I didn't mean to scare you. We're heading to class now. We'll get a head start. The bell rings in three minutes, and then we have the time before the late bell as well, so we can walk slowly. You guys wanna come?"

"We're right behind you," Edward informed, nodding. He looked at me, smirking, and stood to offer me his hand. "Maybe while we're walking you can explain your little outburst, hmm?"

**...**

"How was your first day of school?"

I closed the refrigerator door to find my dad leaning in the doorway to our yellow-walled, sunny-themed kitchen. "Fine," I said, like most other teenagers respond when asked that same question.

"_Fine_," he mocked me. "Did your registration go okay?"

_I had a panic attack halfway through my meeting with the office manager. _"Yeah, everything went smoothly." _I met Edward Cullen, and he's extremely attractive, and he's my biology partner, and it's extremely awkward because I successfully avoided the topic of me accusing him of being a serial killer so he'll probably be very curious about that tomorrow. But other than that, registration went fantastic and I made a new friend. _

"Well, that's good," Charlie said. His heavy black boots thumped loudly as he strolled over to sit at his normal seat at the old white kitchen table. "Make any friends?"

I turned to look out the window above the sink that provided a lovely view of the front lawn. "Uh, yeah, a couple," I muttered, watching a few birds fight over the bread crumbs that our neighbor had thrown onto their driveway.

"And what are their names?" my dad pressed.

"Um . . . Edward," I mumbled, "and Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Rosalie –" Did Rosalie count as a friend? She was friend_ly_, but I don't know if –

"The Cullen Clan?" Charlie spat. "That's who you . . ." He cleared his throat. "That's very nice, Bells. Umm . . . Carlisle Cullen – their father – is a very nice man. The best surgeon in Forks. Well, technically, he's the _only _surgeon in Forks, but we're very lucky to have him, and – Bella?"

_Doctor. Needles. Pain. _

The visions returned, and I closed my eyes, gripping the side of the counter for support as my knees gave out. "Bella?" Charlie called behind me, but his voice was soft and echoed in my ears. He sounded farther away than what I logically knew that he was. "Bella, can you hear me?"

I felt hands under my armpits, yanking me away from the sink and plopping me down on a kitchen chair. It seemed to me that I was looking through a fog. My vision was blurring, and I felt dizzy.

"I'm calling an ambulance," I heard Charlie's voice say.

_Ambulance. Hospital. Medication. _

Around me, my surroundings changed. The yellow, sun-happy color of the familiar kitchen turned red. The white and yellow curtains were torn right before my eyes as dark crimson blood dripped down the counters, staining the clean tiles when it dripped onto the floor. I whipped my head around to see my mother – she was leaning against the fridge, talking on the cell phone. But she wasn't talking – she was screaming. Screaming for help. Begging for it. Her face was so scared, and she looked so weak. I felt myself reach out towards her, but something caught my arm. I looked at whatever had clamped down on my wrist, but had no recognition. I tried to stand and help my mother, but I was pushed back down onto something hard, something underneath me.

In front of me, my mother turned, and I saw the source of the blood. Her side was punctured, and her blood was gushing out of her wound.

"Bella, talk to me!" I heard someone call. Did I know this person? How could they not help my mother? Did they not understand that she was hurt, and needed assistance?

My mother fell to the ground, the phone she had been holding clattering to the floor and breaking into a bunch of broken pieces. She cried out, her tears leaking onto the floor to mix with the blood pooling around her.

"Mom!" I yelled, struggling against whatever it was that was holding me back, but I wasn't getting anywhere.

"Bella, Bella!" My name, being yelled over the sound of my mother's screams, mixed together to make a noise loud enough to make me deaf. I felt hot tears running down my cheeks, but I didn't remember starting to cry. I fought harder against the force holding me down, but I only felt myself getting weaker as I watched my mother bleed.

"Bella, stop!" There was that voice again. "Hello, yes, yes! This is Charlie Swan, Chief of Police! My daughter is . . . I have no idea what she's doing! Something's wrong, you have to send an ambulance right away!"

_Death. Sadness. Funerals. _

"She needs to see a doctor right now," the voice insisted. "She's having a panic attack, I think! Please, send someone immediately!"

_Murder. Absence. Restraints. Illness. _

"Thank you, thank you so much." The voice was relieved, now. The force that was holding me down pushed harder, and as I gasped for breath in sync with my mother – still lying on the floor, still bleeding – I felt the world give out around me. When my mother's eyes slipped closed, mine mirrored hers. When her body went limp against the bottom of the counter, the blackness overtook me once again.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**Next chapter sets the plot in motion! Stay tuned!**

**My favorite line from this chapter is: **

"I don't know, something about his locker partner dealing drugs," Emmett said dismissively.

**What's yours?**

**I have to explain this really quick. I realize that the Cullens would already **_**know **_**what was happening with Edward – they could hear everything from any point in the school, really – but Alice began that conversation because she knew that Bella wanted the answer to why Edward hadn't been there and would never ask for the information herself. A few of them were actually eating food because Alice had warned them in advance that they needed to make sure Bella didn't feel like the odd one out. I had to explain that now because I won't be touching on it in future chapters.**

**Thanks for reading. Please leave me a review and let me know what you think. See you next chapter. **


	5. Chapter Five

**WARNING: The mention of cancer in this story might be offensive or hurtful to some readers. Readers should choose whether or not to proceed knowing this information. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga.**

* * *

**Chapter Five of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

Beeping. It was a sound that I had become familiar with; I spent a lot of time in the hospital when I was little, before my mother passed. I'd seen her in the special rooms in the hospital in Phoenix – the ones where they kept dead bodies to be examined. My father had been there to confirm that it was my mother's body, and I'd gone along because we had no babysitter. From that room, I'd heard the heart monitor and IV machines beeping in tune with each other, only a second separating the one-pitch-off sounds. Now, it was that second that separated each beep that gave me a moment of silence to calm myself before the image of my mother's dead body lying in a hospital bed would flash again.

I'd been lying there for probably about an hour, not moving, not opening my eyes – just lying there. I knew where I was the moment I woke from my . . . slumber? Blackout? I didn't know what to call it. I _did _know that I was in a hospital, wearing one of those itchy hospital gowns with no back to them, and that there was a needle in my left arm that most likely led to an IV giving me fluids that I was in desperate need of.

I didn't want to open my eyes. I knew what would happen if I did. I would see a boring, gray and white hospital room that would remind me of the one my mother had lost her life in, and the images would return. I didn't want them to come back – I didn't want to lose myself in them again. I didn't want to lose control of myself. I didn't want to feel the awful sickness in the pit of my stomach that came with them. I just wanted them to go away – I wanted to stop remembering.

But I would never be able to un-see the things that I'd seen.

"Shouldn't she be awake by now?"

It was Charlie. His voice location told me that he was sitting somewhere to my right, probably flipping out. He was never good with sickness – he was actually more of a germ-freak than he let on, but I never said anything. He didn't like hospitals any more than I did, but for a different reason. He didn't like the disease and sickness that came with them – I didn't like the memories that would become unavoidable.

"Oh, Charlie," a voice responded. It was a man speaking. His voice was soft, gentle, and caring. It also reminded me of someone. I didn't know who, but – "Bella will be just fine. The blackout that she had was simply her mind's way of protecting her. It might take time for her to wake."

"Thank you, Dr. Cullen, for everything that you've done," Charlie breathed.

_Cullen_. Edward. Alice. Emmett. I remembered then – everything that had happened up until my blackout. I remembered the image of my mother – so clear, so real that I'd thought she was really there in Forks, Washington, but she hadn't been anywhere near that state since she was nineteen years old. That was why I needed to keep the images away – they had morphed into full-on hallucinations from the pictures that they had begun as.

"Anytime, Charlie," Dr. Cullen responded, and I heard a jingling sound, possibly a set of keys, or a special part of a medical machine. The man's voice got closer to my left side, and I felt the needle in my arm move. "Her IV is giving her the fluids that she needs, so her body will stay healthy. But she'll most likely be very hungry when she wakes."

"I'm sure she will be, after three days," my dad muttered.

_Three days? _Couldn't be. The last blackout I had had only been about five minutes or so long . . . but three days? That seemed ridiculous.

"Yes, well." Dr. Cullen cleared his throat. "Perhaps she and my son could go out for a bite to eat when that time comes."

"Excuse me?"

"Charlie, my Edward has really taken a liking to Bella," the man – I suddenly remembered Alice saying that her father's name was Carlisle – said boldly. I heard his feet shuffle against the floor as he strutted away from my IV machine.

I mentally patted myself on the back. I was thinking freely about my surroundings and the images were staying away. Maybe it was in my control . . . mind over matter.

"Doctor Cullen, I understand that you think that you're doing something good by trying to set them up, but Bella needs _help_," Dad snapped. "She needs to see someone, and talk about this, whatever it is. You said it yourself, she had a panic attack. She needs to let her emotions out, she needs to –"

"That isn't something that can be forced, Charlie," Carlisle Cullen interrupted. "That is something that we will suggest to her, and if she agrees, we will go from there. And I didn't say that she had a panic attack – I said that a panic attack is the most likely cause of her behavior. I can't say that for sure until I get the results of her blood test back. They should be here by this afternoon."

"What's a blood test going to tell you?" Charlie demanded. "Surely you're not telling me that there might be some disorder that caused this!"

"It's nothing that you should worry about right now," my doctor said, "unless it comes down to it being the cause."

"_What _being the cause?"

"I'm not going to tell you unless it shows up in her blood work, Charlie," Carlisle said. "You don't need to worry – it's rare, and it's not life threatening. And I'm sure it's not the cause here."

"Doctor Cullen," Charlie began, but I didn't hear the rest of his sentence.

_Death. Tears. Grief. _

So much for Mind over Matter.

Suddenly, my arm twitched, and swallowed. _Crap_. Now they would know that I was –

"Bella?" I heard Charlie begin to rush over to me, a loud thud, followed by a whispered curse – he'd probably tripped over his own foot; I'd inherited my clumsiness from him. "Bella, can you hear me, sweetheart?"

I blinked my eyes open. It took a moment for them to focus, but when they did, my dad was the first think that I saw. "Hey, Dad," I croaked.

"Bells," he breathed, but didn't move to hug me. I was wired down to the bed too much for him to be able to safely wrap his arms around me. "How do you feel? Are you alright?"

"I'm –" I choked, falling into a coughing spell. "I'm okay, Dad."

"Miss Swan," Dr. Cullen called, stepping into view around my dad's head. "Do you remember much of what happened before your blackout?"

I swallowed. "I remember all of it."

The doctor's eyebrows shot up. "All of it? That's . . . unusual," he murmured. "I'm sure you don't want to talk about it right now, so I'll let you get acquainted with everything that's happened, but soon you'll have to sit down and tell me what you remember, alright? I have to know so that I can assess your injuries and compare the damage to other cases."

I nodded. "Okay. This evening should be okay; I think I'll be ready."

The doctor nodded. "Wonderful. Just press that button on your remote if you need anything, and a nurse will come and assist you. Please don't stand or get out of bed, of course, until a nurse comes to remove your IV in about fifteen minutes, once that bag is empty."

"Okay," I agreed.

Carlisle Cullen nodded, glanced at Charlie, and swiftly walked out of the room. He probably wanted to give us time to talk privately.

"I'm so glad you're alright, Bella," Dad whispered as soon as the doctor was gone. I noticed that his hands, hovering in the air around my body as he tried to find an opening in order to hug me, were shaking and pale.

"Relax, Dad," I breathed. "Have you eaten while I've been in here? You look weak and . . . tired, have you slept at all in the past three days?"

"You were sick, Bella," he muttered. "I couldn't sleep."

"I can tell by the big black bags under your eyes." It was true; he looked as if he hadn't slept since June, and his breathing was shallow.

"Dad, you need to keep yourself healthy, too," I scolded him. "I can't get better if I'm worrying about you!"

"Aw, jeez, Bells, I'm okay," Dad said with an _aw shucks _kind of attitude.

"You better get checked out to make sure," I insisted.

He ignored that. "How'd you know you've been in here for three days?"

"I heard you and Dr. Cullen talking a few minutes ago," I sighed. I leaned back, my finger pressing into the button on my remote that would recline my bed. I leaned back until I felt the pull in my arm from the needle extending too much.

"Did you hear his suggestion about . . ."

"Me going on a date with Edward?" I grinned. Something about that idea made my stomach flutter and my heart soar. "Yes, I did."

"And?"

"And, I think it's a good idea."

"You _do_?"

"I . . . um . . . I like him, Dad."

"You . . . you . . . well," he mumbled, rubbing his hands down his face dejectedly, "I guess . . . it might be a plan . . . but not until you get better."

"Alright, Dad."

"Bells, what –" He stopped. "What happened?"

I looked away, staring at the plain gray walls of the hospital room. I think there was a red spot on the wall, possibly blood –

I looked away before the images came back. "I don't know, Dad," I lied. "I just . . . I saw –"

"Miss Swan?" I looked up to see a tall, skinny, redheaded nurse standing in the doorway of the room. "Are you ready to get your IV taken out?"

I nodded.

She smiled. "Okay, then, let's get it done."

…

"Bella?"

I was sitting up in my hospital bed, flipping slowly through the channels on the crappy television that was mounted on the wall in front of me when Dr. Cullen knocked. "Yes?"

"Is your father here?"

"He went to the bathroom," I informed him.

"Well, then, I'll just wait for him to get back," he said softly, entering the room and sitting down on the pale pink chair with a ripped cushion that didn't match the room at all.

My stomach knotted. He didn't look like what he had to say was good news, but I didn't press. Whatever he had to say was obviously something that Charlie would need to know, as well, so I kept quiet and continued to flip through the TV.

Two minutes later, my father waltzed back in casually, relaxed. His posture changed when he saw the doctor sitting stiffly on the other side of the room. "Dr. Cullen," he began. "May I help you?"

"I have the results of Bella's blood test," the doctor responded.

My heart plunged to my stomach. _It's bad. Whatever he had been hinting at the other day, whatever he wouldn't mention, that's what it is. It was supposed to be rare . . . Charlie's gonna be so crushed. He's gonna flip . . . _

"It's bad, isn't it?" Charlie demanded. "_Isn't _it? Is it what you were talking about on Saturday?"

Carlisle nodded. "No, Charlie." He turned his attention to me. I'm sure I looked like a wide-eyed panic attack waiting to happen all over again. "Bella, what happened to you on Wednesday was definitely a panic attack. That's not what has me worried. What I was looking for with the blood test did not show up."

"Then . . . then what is it?" I swallowed, flicking the television off.

"Bella, your blood results have given me a surprise," he began. "It's not something that I was planning on checking for. It's just something that shows up on all blood tests – there isn't a specific test for this special disease. And it turned up on yours, and I just . . . I'm so sorry that I have to tell you this in light of this visit, because I'm sure that this is the last thing that you would have been expecting, but –"

"Doc, stop rambling and tell us what's wrong," Charlie snapped.

"I suppose there's really no way to tell you this gently," Carlisle sighed. "Bella, your blood test results have alerted me that you've developed leukemia."

…

Charlie didn't take it well, and so it was about an hour before Carlisle could calm him own enough to explain exactly _what _that meant. During the time that he and the nurses were speaking with Charlie, I'd done some research.

The bright screen of my laptop stared back at me as I searched the internet with shaky hands.

_Leukemia: noun: an often fatal cancer in which white blood cells displace normal blood, leading to infection, shortage of red blood cells anemia, bleeding, and other disorders. Certain types of childhood leukemias respond well to treatment, which includes drugs, chemotherapy and radiotherapy._

The images of words flashing across my eyes was more real now than it had ever been.

_Fatal. Infection. Disorder. _

The dictionary of words had gotten a few more powerful words to add, and now they wouldn't seem to go away. I saw my mother's body in a hospital bed again, but then two seconds later, she faded away and I entered in her place. Instead of _me _sitting quietly beside _her _as she slept, it was now Charlie sitting next to my bed. He was sobbing, and the machine next to me showed a flat green line running across . . .

I slapped my laptop shut.

I was scheduled to start chemotherapy in three days. Carlisle had gotten _that _much out before Charlie flipped. There was a seventy-five percent chance that my hair would fall out. There was a twenty-three percent chance that it would just thin a little, and it wouldn't be noticeable. There was a two percent change that absolutely none of my hair would fall out. And I was devastated.

My hair was what reminded me the most of my mom. My brown hair had matched hers except for the slight curl that gave my hair an extra bounce that hers never had. I always felt comfort when I looked at myself in the mirror and saw it staring back at me. It felt like I was keeping her alive a little bit, as odd as that sounds. But Dr. Cullen said if my hair falls out, it probably won't grow back the exact same way.

If I even survive.

But I can't think like that. I can't think that I'm going to die. I have to stay positive. I have to be happy; I have to live my life to its fullest. I have to be optimistic.

I have to stay strong for Charlie, because he wasn't taking it well. He'd been crying for almost two days straight. Every time he looked at me, he would say things like, "Why would God choose to take you? Why you?" and "You're so calm and accepting, I wish I could be like you, Bella!" and I would want to cry so badly, but I knew that I had to hold it in. He needs me to be a role model of sorts. If he knows that I'm dying inside – both in the literal sense and the mental sense – he'd fall apart.

"Bella?" Carlisle's voice pulled me from my thoughts. "Perhaps you'd like me to . . . _explain _things more clearly to you now."

I nodded, sitting up higher in my hospital bed. It would be nice to have answers. Glancing at my father, I saw his face turn to stone. He'd been taken to a separate room, and the doctor had already explained everything he was about to explain to me.

I knew he would be silent during his entire monologue – he wouldn't want to be attacked by nurses with needles again.

"In the body, there are special tissues that support the development of blood cells," Doctor Cullen began, and I prepared myself to listen intently. "The cells made from there are called stem cells. Those stem cells then mature into two different types of white blood cells, which fight unwanted disease and bacteria in your body. A myeloid stem cell can mature into a myeloid blast, which can form red blood cells that carry oxygen through the body, and other cells called platelet cells, which group together when the body is injured and clot to stop bleeding. Lymphoid stem cells mature into white blood cells B and T, which both fight different diseases. The formation of these stem cells in those tissues is very important to your body – if white blood cells are not formed, then the body is susceptible to many diseases that could severely harm it, and red blood cells give oxygen to all of the different organs, and obviously oxygen is important."

I inhaled and exhaled, thinking about the red blood cells inside me that had just received that oxygen and were carrying it all over my body. I nodded.

He continued. "A person who has leukemia has . . . suffered for a mutation in the bone marrow. The tissues in your body, Bella, are creating abnormal white blood cells. Those are called leukemia cells. Those cells don't do the jobs that they were created to do and they don't die when they should. So, as more blood cells are made, the leukemia cells block out the normal cells and prevent those cells from doing their jobs, as well. Now, your body is left with a bunch of cells that don't work."

He glanced out the window, pausing for a moment, letting me take in that knowledge. I'd learned about some of that in health class, but I'd never heard of leukemia cells before. I told my doctor that.

"Yes, I'm sure you haven't," he mumbled. "High schools don't deem it necessary to educate students in the knowledge of what can go wrong in their bodies – you only know of the _correct _ways that the body functions."

I hummed to myself, frowning. It seemed stupid to keep that information from us, but I suppose not everyone developed leukemia – I was different in _that _way, as well.

Doctor Cullen resumed speaking. "There are two types of leukemia, and the type that you've developed is called Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. It develops slowly. That's why you experienced no symptoms. Later on, as your chemotherapy progresses and the disease becomes more known to the systems in your body, you'll experience fatigue and dizziness, easy bruising, infections, and possibly lymph node swelling."

"What are lymph nodes, exactly?"

"They're little capsules in your body that contain immune cells," he explained. "Now, I know what you're thinking. What did I do to cause this? Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong? Bella, it wasn't anything you did. In fact, no one knows what causes any kind of cancer, let alone blood cancer. The good news is that we caught it early, and that means that the disease hasn't rooted itself too deeply in your body yet. Treatments will work powerfully. Your survival rate is –"

I held up my hand to silence him. "At this point, I really don't want to know."

He nodded. "I respect that. But this isn't a death sentence, Bella – not yet. Not at this time in its growth."

I nodded, too. "That's really comforting."

"Bells, you hungry?" Dad asked suddenly, and I knew he was looking for an escape from this room. He was sitting on the ugly pink chair next to my bed. "I'm gonna head down to the cafeteria and see if there's any . . . _edible _food there."

"I think the phrase _edible food _is doubly redundant, but yeah, I could eat something." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Cullen grin at my comment.

Charlie grinned. "You've seen some of that hospital food." He made a face. "It's disgusting."

I agreed. "Completely. Maybe they have a Subway?"

"We'll find out," he told me. He stood, picked up his wallet, and grinned at me before walking out of the room.

"So, Bella," my doctor said gently after my father had gone, "do you have any questions for me?"

"I'm clear on everything that you've said to me," I muttered. "You explained everything really well, I just . . . I don't want to lose my hair, but that's inevitable, so . . ."

He nodded. "I believe I will start you with the radiation. It will allow you to keep your hair, and it's had decent success rates in the past. I don't know if that will work out and I can't guarantee that none will fall out, but -"

"I'm willing to try it," I whispered. "I'll try anything. What have I got to lose?"

* * *

**Attention: If anyone is offended or uncomfortable with the inclusion of cancer in this story, I will not be upset if you stop reading. Thank you for reading thus far if you do not continue. I really appreciate your support. **

**The information that Carlisle provides Bella with in this chapter and many chapters ahead was found on this website: **

****** .com(slash)leukemia(slash) **

******and I found that it was very helpful. Visit this website for more information about leukemia and other terminal diseases. **

******My favorite quote from this chapter:**

"I . . . um . . . I like him, Dad."

**It sets off the entire plot! What's your favorite quote?**

**Thanks for reading! Tune in next week. **


	6. Chapter Six

**Our first look into Edward's mind! Long awaited, this was for me. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga.**

* * *

**Chapter Six of Twenty-Nine**

**Edward's Point of View**

"I think this is the day, Edward." Alice is standing in my doorway with Jasper leaning over her, smirking. Her short black hair wasn't spiked like it usually was – today it was curled in little ringlets. Jasper watched her face as if he couldn't look away. A week earlier, I would have thought he were insane for being so head-over-heels, but after meeting Bella, I knew exactly what he was feeling. "I mean, I haven't seen anything yet, but don't you just _know_?" She hadn't had a vision of the future – her special talent – and yet she was so sure. I wished I could be that sure. "Can't you just _feel _it, Edward? He's going to okay your visit today, I know it. Carlisle's going to waltz home with Esme, feeling all happy-go-lucky from hunting and feeding, and he's going to say 'Edward, why don't you come to work with me today?' and you'll say –"

"That's enough, Alice," I interrupted. The CD that I had been playing stopped, and I stood to put a new one in my CD player. "Even if I went with him to the hospital today, I would have to have Bella's permission in order to see her."

"But isn't it just _killing _you?" Alice cried. "Aren't you so worried about her? Don't you want to know that she's safe?"

It was a silly question. The moment I had heard that Bella had been transported to the hospital, Emmett and Jasper had to restrain me in order to keep me from running there and pushing my way into her hospital room. I'd distracted myself by hunting and playing chess with Esme, but I couldn't stop picturing Bella lying there, ill. And then Carlisle had come home one day, and he'd tried so hard to keep his thoughts out of my reach, but I heard it anyway. I heard him thinking about what it would to do me if she passed away. I could still hear him in my head. _He'll be on the first plane to Italy if this cancer kills his mate – Jasper was ready to rip his own head off that day we thought Alice had gotten caught in a forest fire and turned to ash . . . _It had taken Emmett, Jasper, Alice, Esme, _and _Rosalie to keep me from going to her while Carlisle tried to explain the situation to me.

Leukemia wasn't a disease I was familiar with, but I'd learned enough over the past two days to know that my mate might be taken away from me too soon. Bella was so small and fragile already. She couldn't have the strength to fight this awful blood disease that threatened her life . . .

"It is!" Alice exclaimed, and Jasper's eyes left her face to look at mine. Alice lowered her voice. "It _is _killing you. Oh, Edward. I'm sure she's okay; I didn't mean to worry you. Maybe we should try some extra convincing with Carlisle? If you explain . . . Oh, Jasper can push the emotions that _you _are feeling into _him _and he'll have to let you see her! Isn't that right, Jazz?"

Jasper grinned down at his wife. "Of course." My brother was good at feeling and manipulating everyone's emotions, but he couldn't seem to control his own around Alice.

"If it happens, it happens, Alice."

She _tsk_ed at me. "She's your mate, and look at you. You're moping around here like she's already dead."

My chest caved in. _Death. _Bella might die. I might never get to see her again. She might never know how much I love her already . . . My eyes burned as the venom rushed to them and my chest began to sob. It was the closest thing to crying that a vampire could reach.

"Oops . . ." Alice whispered.

Jasper sidestepped her. "Hey, man, she's going to be okay," he assured me, crouching down beside me where I was sitting on the ground in front of my couch. "She'll be fine. If the chemo doesn't work, you can just change her."

I sucked in a deep breath. "I suppose."

"But that's not going to happen," he insisted. "Carlisle's her doctor. He's cured _thousands _of patients of cancer."

"That was breast cancer," I sighed, "which is the most curable. This is different."

"No, it's not," Alice said. "He has a theory. A theory that _works_. A theory that he _heard _from another doctor." She rolled her eyes, adding the air-quotes with her fingers. "I don't know why he claims that. Why didn't he just take the credit himself?"

"Carlisle doesn't want glory," I muttered. "He just wants to save human lives."

"_And _to bring this conversation around full-circle," Jasper sing-songed, "Carlisle will save _Bella's _life. There – the end, problem solved, let's go hunting." He straightened, grinning, and leaped off of the balcony on the other side of my room.

"Maybe Emmett wants to come!" Alice suggested.

"Emmett's busy, thank you!" I heard the vacant sound of a videogame playing softly from the living room when Emmett's voice stopped, and I grinned. Of course, my family was used to not having privacy with our conversations because the entire family could hear every little sound within a two-mile radius. It still made me laugh at the way Emmett pretended as if he were standing right next to Alice at the moment she mentioned him.

"Of course Emmett's busy," Alice grumbled, but the corners of her mouth were turned up in a smile. "He's so much like a human; it's not even funny."

"If you could hear his mind, it would be absolutely hilarious."

_I heard that. _

I realized that I had been blocking the thoughts of my family members for over an hour, and Emmett's thoughts in particular had taken a rather childish turn. I grinned. "He's really very sensitive . . . on the inside."

_I heard that, too. _

"Yes, Emmett," I said, nodding, though he couldn't see me, "the point of me saying it was for you to hear. I thought you would know that."

_Don't be mean to me, Edward. Rose will be mad when I don't feel like putting out when she gets home. _

"Please don't share personal details about you and Rosalie during your . . . intimate moments," I blurted before he could get around to picturing their last escapade together, but the request only brought the images forward in his mind. I cringed. "That's _enough_, Emmett."

"'You calling me ugly, Edward?" _I return home, expecting to see my family – all of whom have missed me – running to greet me, and I hear you trash-talking my husband. Such a shame. _

I smiled. "You went shopping, Rose. It's not like you went to visit the Denali's."

"This is why I hate having conversations with you sometimes, Edward," Alice huffed. I heard Jasper laugh from where he was still standing below my balcony. "I only get half of the conversation."

"Rosalie's just being her naturally irritating self," I commented.

_Oh, you know what, Edward –_

"Alice, 'you coming or what, darlin'?"

"I'm on my way!" Her shoes clicked against the hard floor of my room as she passed tossing me a smile and a wink over her shoulder as she went. "Remember what I said, Edward. Carlisle is key."

I shook my head, chuckling. "I'll remember, Alice."

"What did I miss?" Rosalie asked Emmett downstairs. She'd probably sat down beside him on the couch, and his arm was probably wrapped around her waist while one hand controlled the remote to the videogame.

"Alice thinks Edward will be allowed to see Bella soon." _Is Carlisle working the late shift today? _

I answered his thoughts with a simple "no".

_No, you don't want to see her, or no, you're crazy? _This was Rosalie.

"I was answering Emmett's thoughts, Rose."

_Does it get confusing? _Emmett thought at the same time Rosalie sneered, _Well, it's not like I could tell, what with you being all vague and mysterious. _

"Does what get confusing, _Emmett_?" Rosalie's thoughts were appreciative toward my label. She demanded that I keep it up.

"Reading minds," he responded. "Like, everyone's at once. Maybe not for you, but how do you answer people if it's . . . a private thing?"

I scoffed, blocking out whatever Rosalie had begun to think after that comment. "We're vampires, Emmett. Since when do we have privacy?"

"Good point." I heard him press a few buttons harder than he had been, and the television beeped loudly. "Yes! I just beat my high score! Oh, yeah!"

I rolled my eyes. "Jasper, Alice. Wait up. I'll come with you."

_I _thought _you'd see it my way_, Jasper thought toward me.

I stood, moving at a speed that would make me a blur to human eyes, and reached out to smack open my CD player. I removed the silver disk from the small gray machine and popped open the case it belonged to. After inserting the case back in the slot where it belonged – all of my music was organized alphabetically, but my favorites were on the shelf nearest to the CD player – I turned towards my brother-for-all-intents-and-purposes was standing with his arm around my sister-for-all-intents-and-purposes. But Alice wasn't _like _a sister – she _was _a sister, in my mind. I had been an only child during my human life, but when I joined Carlisle and the others were changed, I was one child out of five.

Jasper tapped his foot impatiently in the grass, which I heard softly crunch underneath it. "Let's go, go, go! Time's a'wasting!"

I laughed, and Emmett shouted negatively at the game he was playing below me. Again, moving at my fastest speed, I sped over to the railing of my balcony. Alice beamed up at me as Jasper backed them both up to give me room to jump. My foot found friction on the top of the railing, and I hoisted my other foot up to place it beside the other. Just as I was about to leap, I heard his thoughts.

_I was hoping we could chat for a little while, Edward_. It was Carlisle.

His thoughts had just entered the surrounding vicinity that allowed me to hear a person's thoughts. In other words, he'd gotten close enough to the house now for me to be able to hear him. I stopped. Below me, both Jasper and Alice heard Carlisle's car hit the gravel of our long, winding driveway. Jasper grinned. "So much for that plan."

I shrugged. "Bella is more important, you must understand."

Alice nodded. "We do. Of course we do, Edward." She waved goodbye as she and her husband turned to flee into the forest.

_Bella expressed an interest in a visit from you today. _

At the sound of Bella's name, my chest leaped. It felt like my heart would begin beating right then and there, even though that was impossible because I had no blood in my system for it to pump. My mind instantly trained itself on thoughts of Bella as I was reminded of the thoughts I had been blocking of my ill, fragile mate. I ran to Carlisle's office, where I would wait for him to enter the house, kiss Esme, greet Emmett and Rose, and remove his hospital attire.

He did each activity in the exact order that he did every day, I noticed, and he did them rather quickly than usual. He had to know that I was waiting rather patiently upstairs – patiently, meaning that I did my best not to break the lamp sitting on his desk when he paused to watch the screen of Emmett's game.

He passed Esme on his way up the stairs and he pecked her on the cheek in addition to the kiss that he had given her when she had greeted at his car. I watched through his thoughts as he hung his doctor's coat up in his closet along with the other white coats that never seemed to get dirty. Finally, _finally, _he entered his office.

Offering me a smile, he sat down at his desk and folded his hands. "I would ask how your day went, Edward, but I already know what you've done all day."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You thought about Isabella all day, didn't you?"

I shrugged. He smiled. _That's what I thought. Shall we have this conversation in . . . private?_

"As in, you'll do all the talking – _erm_, thinking – and I'll simply listen?"

"Aw, c'mon, let us hear it, too!" Emmett complained from downstairs.

"Shut up, Emmett!" I heard Rosalie hiss back.

I chuckled as Carlisle shook his head, grinning. "Our family," he sighed. "One of a kind."

"Figuratively speaking," I added.

_Isabella Swan . . . she's quite a lovely girl, Edward. She's fantastic. She's brilliant and kind . . . she'll be good for you, son._

"Please tell me whatever you came here to tell me, Carlisle," I blurted, and closed my eyes, regretting sounding ungrateful. "I mean . . . uh, I –"

"I understand," he assured me softly. "It's hard not knowing how your true soul-mate is doing, if she's okay. I have an update."

I sat up straighter. "Tell me."

_She agreed to try the radiation today. Her father wasn't thrilled about it, but she stood up for herself. She had her first round at noon. _

The tension that had been built up in my muscles suddenly went lack, and I blew out a relaxed breath. This was good news – she would live. She had to live now. Carlisle had almost perfected his theory years ago. It had to work, or he wouldn't still be using it today. Knowing this, I slumped back in my chair, my worries momentarily quenched with good news.

_I won't know anything about how it affects her for about . . . maybe a week, two weeks, but it's worth a shot._ He paused, grinning at me widely_. I feel good about it all, Edward. I'm sure she'll survive. I'm almost positive._

I nodded my thanks. "That's . . . the best news you've given me all week."

He laughed. "That's not all I have to say, though."

I arched an eyebrow, but stayed silent.

_She asked about you today. _

In a flash, I was out of the hard black chair of Carlisle's office, pacing back and forth. "What did she say?" I demanded. "How did she say it? Does she want to see me? Can we go now?" The extreme happiness that coursed through my body at that moment almost brought me to my knees, because finally, after all the worrying I had done, Bella had answered my prayers by simply mentioning me to my pretend father.

_Calm yourself, Edward. I'm sure Rosalie is quite curious right now, and you don't want them to know all of your personal secrets, isn't that right? _He was referring to a conversation that we'd once had when I felt that my privacy was always being invaded – a conversation that took place over thirty years ago.

I listened intently to my sort-of-sister's thoughts.

_. . . such an idiot. I don't know why he's such a weirdo. Bella is totally going to think he's too much of a psycho to want to be with him. But I guess there soul-mates . . . _

_ Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, NO! Turn! Left! Go left, go left . . . noooo, no, no, go right! Oh, crap, was that an alien? Is that a polar bear? What? What kind of videogame is this? I'm so bored. Why can't I put down this controller? _

So, Emmett wasn't a threat to exposing my secret, if he happened to become curious enough to come snooping. Rosalie seemed too distracted by the image of herself in the mirror downstairs to care.

"Are you going to tell me what happened, or what?"

He sighed. _She said she misses school . . . but I think she meant that she misses you. _

I ignored that – Carlisle had assumed that, and the slight chance that he was wrong could lead me to heartbreak if Bella hadn't meant that at all.

"What _exactly _did she say, Carlisle?" I breathed.

He chuckled, lazily leaning back in his office chair and staring at the picture of Esme that sat almost exactly in the middle of the desk, although it was pushed up to the longest edge closest to where I sat so it was out of his way when he worked from home. He said nothing, but launched right into showing me the scene that he'd witnessed not-so-long-ago, it seemed.

I saw the images in front of my eyes just as Carlisle had. I saw Bella the way he had, and heard his voice in my ears as he spoke as if our bodies had been switched and I were now him. I heard the exact thoughts he'd been thinking, too, but they weren't important. I didn't listen to them as the scene played out before me as if I were sitting in a movie theater, enjoying the latest teenage saga movie.

_"The results of your latest blood test came in this afternoon, Miss Swan," he said, and Bella looked up at him. "I mean, Bella." _

_ Smiling, she set the book she'd had her nose buried in aside. "Bad news?" _

_ "Not particularly," he answered. _

I couldn't see Carlisle's face expressions because _I'm Worried Sick about My Mate and My Sort-Of Father Is Her Doctor _– the title for my own personal video I'd come up with did need to be shortened, I admitted to myself as a side note – was being played from his point of view.

_"Of course, the leukemia is still there, so that's not _good _news," he continued, "but it didn't just disappear." _

_ Bella laughed shakily. "Wouldn't _that _just be the best birthday present ever?" _

_ "_It's her birthday?" I interrupted without actually realizing I was speaking, and the visions of his thoughts were abruptly cut off as his mind wandered elsewhere.

He shook his head. "Her father's birthday is tomorrow, and she would have been ecstatic to be able to tell him that it's all gone away."

I understood that. My chest tightened, and I closed my eyes as I was reminded of the way the conversation between the two had begun. "Show me the rest."

The images resumed immediately.

_"Yes, that would be wonderful, wouldn't it?" he sighed. _

_ "So, what's the actual news?" Bella's eyes drifted around the un-modernized hospital room she'd undoubtedly been in for over a week now. _

_"Well, it's not gotten worse over the past few days," Carlisle informed her. "The number of blood cells that were showing up to be affected in the original test equals the number that this test gave. Of course, that doesn't mean that the leukemia will never get worse, because I'm sure it will, but this gives me a window of opportunity, if you will – hopefully, the disease will spread at the same slow speed during the time before we get you cleared for the start of your radiation."_

_ "Yes," Bella agreed, "and how long until I can start?"_

_ "A few more days," he told her. His eyes left Bella and drifted along her IV equipment, and his thoughts centered on the evenly-spread out noise of her heart rate monitor. He talked as he watched his hands run along the tubes and wires to make sure everything was still working properly. _

_ "Doctor Cullen?" _

_ At the sound of her voice, his eyes traveled slowly back to her. "Please, Bella. Call me Carlisle." _

_ "Carlisle," she corrected. He watched her twist her hands together in her lap nervously. "Um . . . I was wondering . . . when I'll be able to get out of here? I mean . . . I've read a lot of informational websites about leukemia, and I saw that patients with this cancer can be treated at home like people with breast cancer, lung cancer, and skin cancer." _

_ "All cancers must be _treated _in a hospital or care facility," he revised, "but the patients do not need to maintain a permanent residence in the hospital. I plan on releasing you after we get you on a firm treatment schedule. That will depend on how your body reacts to the pill. You'll probably return home and to your normal life in about . . . a week and a half, maybe two weeks." _

_ "Oh." She looked down at the book on her lap, but didn't seem to want to read it anymore. _

_ "Is there a reason you asked?" he questioned. "Well, of course there was. I suppose I'm asking what your reasoning was for asking." _

_ "I just . . . I . . . um, I miss school." She looked everywhere but where Carlisle's gaze was. _

_ "I can have my children collect your school work for you and bring it here if you'd like," _he offered in return, his mind wandering . . .

I heard the thoughts that Carlisle had thought in that exact moment. _'Edward would be thrilled to have an excuse to visit her. He's been on pins and needles lately.' _

I had a comment, of course, but if I distracted him, the scene before me would stop, and I was on the edge of my seat in his office to see the rest. I kept my mouth shut, and the memories played on.

_"That would be wonderful," she exclaimed, beaming up at him. _

I got lost in her smile, wishing it had been me she had smiled at like that. One day, I promised myself, she _would _be smiling at me like that. One day, she would know me and love me and she would know that I love her.

_Bella continued. "As long as it wouldn't inconvenience Edward."_

_ "I was actually going to assign the job to my daughter, Alice," Carlisle said. _

His thoughts told me that he had only said that to see how Bella would react. Why had she assumed it would be _me _getting her work for her? Or was she dropping a hint to Carlisle that she wanted me to visit? Did she miss me as much as I missed her? Had she truly forgiven me for having to abandon her during her first day at Forks High School?

_Bella turned the brightest shade of scarlet and stuttered. "Oh, of course . . . I love Alice, she's very kind to me . . . um, she's in my history class, so she can get my work from there very easily, and . . . yeah, no, that's wonderful. If she doesn't mind, that would be . . . I'd be thrilled. Mhm, that's . . ." _She stopped, swallowing._ "Edward is in my biology class. He might be able to give me my homework in that class, and then Alice wouldn't have to worry about that." _

The vision bobbed up and down to show me that Carlisle had then nodded his head.

_"I'm sure that would work fine," he agreed, and his eyes left Bella once again as he began to leave the room. "I'll tell my kids tonight and they'll bring your work to you tomorrow after school." _

He noted that her heartbeat had stuttered when he mentioned that I would be coming. It thrilled me, and I smiled at Carlisle's desk.

_"That's great," Bella murmured. "Make sure they come see me personally. I-I mean, you know, so I can thank them." _

_ "Of course, Bella. I must be going now. Lunch is on its way." He turned, probably giving her a smile, and waltzed out of the room just as the cart carrying Bella's food entered and the nurse took his place when it came to Bella's attention. _

Alice had been right, again. This had been the day I'd been waiting for, and tomorrow would be the thrill of my life that had been a long time coming.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**My favorite quote from this chapter: **

"Jasper tapped his foot impatiently in the grass, which I heard softly crunch underneath it. "Let's go, go, go! Time's a'wasting!""

**Thanks for reading! Please leave me a review and let me know what you thought, predictions for future chapters . . . anything at all, really. :) But please, no cursing. Thank you. See you next chapter. **


	7. Chapter Seven

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended. **

**Chapter Seven of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

When the nurse came into my plain, boring hospital room to tell me that my visitors had arrived, I about leaped off of the uncomfortable mattress to go greet Edward in the hallway myself. How I controlled myself I don't know, but I did it.

"Are you up for a visit, Miss Swan?" she asked. Her scrubs were pink and blue with little purple hearts covering the sleeves in strips. They were the ugliest scrubs I'd seen any nurse wearing during this hospital visit, and I sniffled a laugh.

"Of course," I allowed. "It's Alice and Edward, right? The Cullens?"

"I believe it's only Edward Cullen, actually," she said, and I remembered her name was Brandy. She was one of the less cranky nurses that I had come to know. "Is that a problem?"

"No!" I squeaked, and scolded myself for sounding too eager. "Erm . . . that's . . . yeah, that's fine."

"He'll be right in." Brandy turned on her heel and slipped back out of the room, pulling the curtain that took away my view of the doorway to the room back in place. "Press your call button if you need anything."

"Okay," I agreed.

Two minutes went by.

No Edward.

I sighed, my patience gone. I had missed him terribly, and although the intensity scared me, I couldn't wait to see him smile, hear him talk, maybe hold his hand . . .

The last one was kind of a long shot, but a girl could hope.

Maybe he'd offer to explain my work to me and stay even longer than expected. Maybe we would talk for a while. I would casually mention that my dad hadn't been able to come see me for the past few days because he had used up all of his personal days at the station and had to work for the next week until the new month started. He would feel bad that I'm eating crap dinners, and he would offer to get me a real dinner. And then we would bond over food and live happily ever after.

I shook my head at myself. Fantasies would get me nowhere.

"Bella?"

My heart stuttered and I jolted upright, and in that moment, I was thankful that Doctor Cullen had detached me from my heart rate monitor. I would have been mortified if Edward had heart the leap in my heart when he spoke. I hadn't heard his footsteps walk up to the curtain. He hadn't made a sound . . .

I watched his shadow through the light blue material. "Y-yes?" I croaked, having been startled with no recovery time.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I saw his shadow shift to the right as he switched his weight from foot to foot. "May I come in?"

"Um . . ." I swallowed, whipping my sweaty palms on the sheets that were pooled around my thighs and looking down at my body. The itchy, ugly hospital gown was the last thing that I wanted him to see me wearing, but I had no other options. My chest and stomach were both fully covered, and I had gotten the chance to take a shower and curl my hair, so at least I didn't have a bedhead. I never wore make up, so I didn't have to worry about that. My skin was too pale for me to be able to pull a face mask off. I shrugged at myself. "Uh, yeah, sure. I'm okay."

"I can come in, then?"

"Yes," I called.

The curtain was pushed away instantly, and Edward stepped in the little circle. He didn't close the curtain behind him completely, and I saw his father watching from the reception desk that was visible through my doorway. Carlisle grinned at me and turned back to the paperwork in his hands.

I looked at Edward. His gray sweater hugged his lean frame in a way that made my heart flutter and my stomach twist into knots. His dark denim jeans led to the nice dress shoes that I'd noticed he had worn on the first day of school, and in his hand was a folder full of what I guessed was my work – the work that I hadn't really needed but had asked for anyway to see if I could get Edward to visit. He smiled at me, his eyes the same unusual color as they had been the day I met him. "Hi, there," he said, tossing me a friendly wave.

"Hi." I didn't trust myself enough to say more.

"I have your school work," he said informatively.

I nodded far too eagerly. "Thank you. I hope it wasn't any trouble getting it."

"Not at all," he assured me kindly, walking forward a few steps and setting the folder down on the little nightstand next to my bed. "It's all there – if you have any questions, my cell phone number is written on a Post-It note on the inside flap."

_His phone number. Control, Bella. Practice Control. _"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Silence followed. Two minutes.

Three minutes.

The only noises in the small room were the beeping of the machinery from the rooms in the same hall as mine and the soft voices of the hospital staff. I swallowed.

"Well, I suppose I'll . . ." Edward started, shifting to stand from the chair he had sat down in. "I'll just . . . I'll go now."

"Wait!" I blurted.

He paused, our eyes meeting.

_Say something. Say something. Don't let him leave! _"I . . . I like your shoes." I closed my eyes, and looked down at my bed sheet in embarrassment. "I mean . . . uh . . ." Insert foot into mouth. "Yeah, they're nice. Very nice."

"Thank you," he said slowly, as if he were talking to a mental patient. In a way, he was. I _was _seeing as therapist about the images of my mother I'd been seeing, after all. Not that I'd opened up to her and spilled my guts yet.

"You . . . you don't have to go," I told him, leaning forward in my bed a little. "Tell me . . . tell me about biology," I stated. The off-white bed sheets tangled in my fingers. "Um . . . my lab partner's name is Mike Newton. Will you tell me about him? So I know what to expect when I go back?"

His face flashed with an emotion, but he composed himself before I could give it a name. "Newton is a pig."

"A pig," I repeated, confused.

"He'll spend more time staring at your body than what's on the microscope's slides." His voice was hard, emotionless. His eyes were fuming. "I wish you could have been my partner. I'm stuck with Wendy Marks. She's an airhead."

He had a female lab partner? I frowned, but not for the reason I made him think it was. "That's awful. I mean, you must have to do all the work all the time."

"Absolutely."

"I hate that," I continued, because this seemed to be a subject where our opinions were similar. "I hate partner work. I'd rather work by myself."

"I agree," he muttered. "Although if I was working with you, Bella, I wouldn't mind so much."

I blushed. "Um . . . yeah, being your lab partner wouldn't be awful at all."

He smiled. I smiled. He stepped closer and sat back down on the ugly chair. "My father said that you'd be back to school in a week or two. That must sound good."

"Oh, yes," I agreed. My heart was beating more steadily now that he was closer and we were having a real conversation. Something about his presence made me calm, and my mood had shot up from the absolute boredom I'd previously been feeling. Being trapped here wasn't exactly making me jump for joy. "It'll be wonderful to be able to leave this _room_."

"How long has it been?" He leaned forward to lean his elbows on his thighs, bringing his face closer to the side of my bed. He bent his head but angled his eyes to peer up at me. "Since you've left this room, I mean?" he clarified.

"Since . . . oh, jeez . . ." I drew up a mental calendar in my head, but the image wasn't helpful. "What's today's date?"

"It's the fifteenth," he said.

"I got here on the eighth," I muttered to myself, staring at a spot on the wall where the awful shade of gray paint had been chipped for concentration. "Umm . . . I haven't seen the therapist in four days . . . so . . . about three days. That's an estimate. My math skills haven't been flexed in a week."

"You're seeing a therapist?"

I swallowed, nodding the smallest of nods. "Um . . . did your dad . . . tell you about . . . what the reason originally was for the blood test that found my leukemia?"

He looked away at the mention of my disease, staring at his fancy shoes. His hands clasped together and his knuckles tightened against each other. "No, he's not allowed to give me the details without your authorization."

"Um, well . . . when I got home from school on the first day, I . . ." I sighed. "It's hard to explain."

"Just say it in the best way you can," he suggested. Our eyes met and he smiled. "I'm sure I can keep up."

"Okay," I began. "Well, originally, I lived with my –" My breath caught in my throat. "– with my –" I tried again. Edward watched me patiently, carefully, calmly. He didn't push me. He didn't roll his eyes at my struggling. His facial expression didn't change from the one that portrayed his honest interest in what I was saying. So I forced it out. "I lived with my mom and dad in Phoenix in the beginning of my life. I was born there. Everything was great in my life, I guess . . . not that I can remember much of it. But when I turned seven, my mom –" I choked, coughing as the word that I'd blocked out all my life tried to come out. "She . . ." The tears began, and the images flashed.

Before my eyes, the hospital room turned red. The blue curtains that blocked the doorway were suddenly torn and singed and the rest of the room looked as if a fire had run wild. Blood trickled down the solid black wall that had once been gray. The off-white bed sheets were now tinted pink from the blood that had been smeared when my hands fisted them together. Technically, the room was covered in red to the point where I could see nothing else. None of the other details of the ruined room were visible to me . . . the blood attracted all of my attention.

"Bella?" It was a familiar voice. Who was that? Who was calling to me? Where were they?

I looked to the left, but I didn't see anyone. My eyes drifted down, and I had to correct myself. I felt the tears begin to travel heavier down my cheeks as I recognized my mother's dead, singed body lying on the ground beside me.

"Oh, God," I croaked.

"Bella! Can you hear me? Bella!"

"Make it stop, please," I whispered to the voice. My therapist had taught me how to handle this, but at that moment, I was too deep into the vision before me to remember what Carol had said. "Oh, God, she's dead, she's dead, she's gone!"

"Bella? Bella, calm down!" The voice was right beside my ear now, but I still saw no one else but my mother's body. Something tugged at my hands, but I saw no hands wrapped around my wrists like I was feeling. "Carlisle! Come here, quickly!"

"What's happened?" a new voice chimed in. It was deeper than the first one. More serious, calm.

"She was telling me about how you discovered her cancer, and then she just – I don't know, she stopped talking and blacked out. She's having a panic attack."

"That's right," the other man agreed. "Hold her arms down, Edward. Don't let her thrash around like that. She'll hurt herself." He'd said _Edward_.

_Edward_.

"Edward," I called out, still seeing nothing but the bloodied and battered hospital room. On the floor, my mother's head flopped to the side as gravity took over its lifelessness. "Edward!"

"I'm here." It was a whisper in my ear. "I'm right here, Bella. Everything's alright."

"Edward!"

"I'm right here," he repeated. I felt lips press against my left temple, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was staring into the worried eyes of Carlisle Cullen, and Edward was hovering nervously over me. The room had turned back to normal, the images gone. It was over.

"Edward," I sobbed. My tears hadn't left with the images. "Edward, it's over!" I leaned to the side, noticing with a thrill that his hands were braced on either side of my waist, and his chest was right beside my ear. My arms threw themselves around his neck and I clung to him without embarrassment. "Don't leave," I pleaded. "Oh, please, don't leave. I know I've only known you for a week and this is the first day we've ever _really _had a nice talk, but it's better when you're here, and – please, just don't go, Edward, I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . ."

Edward shushed me. "Calm down, Bella," he assured me. "Everything's fine. I'm not going anywhere, and Carol George is on her way – you know her, don't you? You know who she is?"

"My therapist," I whispered into his neck.

"She'll help you work through this panic attack, okay?" he asked, one hand rising off the bed to rub my back gently. "She'll make you feel better about it. I won't leave, okay? I promise. I won't leave."

"Okay," I mumbled.

"Okay."

…

"You didn't tell me she's been sleeping this often," Edward said.

I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Listening to conversations being held about me while I'm asleep was becoming a favorite pastime of mine. I mean, there was nothing else to do in this big, boring old hospital.

"She's fine, Edward," Doctor Cullen responded. "Sleeping is her body's way of protecting itself. Her therapist is going to meet with her again when she wakes and we'll see if we can get more information out of her." My last session with Carol didn't go very well. I was still too shaken up from my panic attack to be able to talk about it. Carlisle told me that we'll just give it a break for now because too much stress isn't good for my body, especially when I'm fighting cancer in my blood. I'd ignored Edward's glare at the floor at the mention of my leukemia, but honesty I was curious as to why he kept responding that way.

"I trust your opinion," Edward snapped, "but I've been through medical school myself, Carlisle. I know a thing or two about the human body. I have to go against your word this time. Something else has to be happening other than her panic attacks and her . . . illness." I was confused. Edward's only a senior in high school. How can he have been through medical school already? Was I hallucinating, or was I missing something really important?

"If you had really put all of your effort into becoming a doctor during those years of your life – which I know you did not do, or you would be a doctor right now – you would remember that every human body reacts slightly different," Carlisle defended. His voice was closer to me than Edward's. If I were to open my eyes, I was sure he would be standing to my left, maybe taking my blood pressure or changing the bag of fluids in my IV, which was still jabbing me in the arm after at least three days of continuous wear. And once again, what did he mean by 'during those years of your life'? He was seventeen. Just how old _was _Edward when he supposedly went to medical school?

"Being a doctor wasn't my calling!" Edward shouted.

"Calm yourself and keep your voice down," Carlisle reprimanded softly. "I have patients who are trying to sleep. It's one in the morning, remember." Is that why there was no light streaming against my closed eyelids?

"I apologize."

"What _is _your calling, then, son?" Carlisle questioned curiously. "You've been doing the same thing for years, now. High school, college, three year break. Different high school, different college, longer break. Eventually, you'll have to get yourself a career." I was definitely crazy. The panic attacks had surely done some serious damage to my brain that Carlisle hadn't noticed, because at Edward was _seventeen_. He hasn't even graduated college _once _yet. He's not old enough to have graduated already, let alone twice or more! My head hurt suddenly, but I fought to keep up my sleeping charade up.

"Bella is. Bella is my calling."

My heart skipped a beat, and my face threatened to lift into a smile. I don't know how I controlled myself.

"Did you hear that?" Carlisle asked. "She's waking." What? Did they hear my heartbeat increase? My heart rate monitor wasn't hooked up and hadn't been since the second day of my hospital visit.

"This conversation will have to continue at home," Edward sighed. I heard his shoes shuffle against the floor as he moved closer and grunted as he sat down on the chair closer to my head. The chair had been moved from the left side of my bed the right.

"I know that you feel incredibly attached to Bella already," Carlisle whispered above my head, "but she's going through a rough time right now. She hates that her father is stressed so much and has to work, and her emotions are all over the place. She's having trouble opening up to Carol, too, as you saw. We can't get to the bottom of what causes these attacks because I don't even think _Bella _knows."

"I hope you aren't this open with _everyone _with the information that her therapist gives you."

"It's classified information for anyone. But she's special to you. I understand that. I know what it feels like. I have Esme, remember? But –"

"It's different with Bella and me," Edward snapped. "Esme . . . she can protect herself. She won't get sick with the flu. She won't die if she gets hit by a car. She knows all of your secrets, and you don't have to hide anything from her. You're protective of her, yes. That's your natural instinct – protect your mate, make sure she's taken care of. But _my _instincts? They're so much more powerful than what you've shown me through your mind." At this point, I've convinced myself that I'm dreaming. None of what he is saying makes sense, so I gave up with trying to think it all through.

Edward continued. "I feel . . . so . . . protective of her, it's not even . . . I can't control it. It's like . . . my body recognizes the fact that she's so small and fragile. It's like my body knows that my mate is weak right now. It knows that she's sick and . . . I can't sit still. My mind is locked on her. My attention might seem diverted, but I'm always watching her or listening to what she's doing if I can't see her. Every time she coughs, every time her heartbeat becomes even a _little _uneven . . . my mind jumps to the worst possible conclusion. I feel like I'm going to lose her . . . and that's because I _might_. This leukemia might take her from me. I can't . . ." he trailed off, and I felt his hand suddenly brush against my neck. "She's so beautiful. She's so special to me . . . and it kills me to know that I can't tell her . . . about me. About us. About what we are."

"Her body can't handle that kind of a shock at this time, Edward. She might shut down because it'll be too much for her to process."

"I know," Edward said to my right. "I know. I understand why I can't tell her. I just wish I could." Dream-Edward was really confusing me, but saying that he feels protective of me really made me love him.

Love him?

Did I love Edward?

I hadn't even known him for two weeks, yet. But I knew – I _knew _without a doubt or question in my mind – that I loved him, and I would always love him.

The question was: How had I fallen in love with him so quickly?

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**She loves him! He loves her? We're not sure yet, but it seems pretty likely, doesn't it? **

**My favorite quote from this chapter is: **

"I . . . I like your shoes." I closed my eyes, and looked down at my bed sheet in embarrassment. "I mean . . . uh . . ." Insert foot into mouth. "Yeah, they're nice. Very nice."

**I can totally picture Stephenie Meyer's Bella saying this for some reason. **

**Thanks for reading. Please leave me a review! See you next chapter. **


	8. Chapter Eight

**Oookay, guys. This is a big chapter for Bella, psychologically. Be prepared to get a lot of important information regarding her mother and the images she keeps seeing. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this story.**

* * *

**Chapter Eight of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

"So, Bella," Carol George began conversationally. Her long, curly blonde locks were pulled into a neat side pony tail that allowed the bulk of it to rest prettily on her left shoulder. We were sitting in her office – me in a soft, plushy, sea green recliner chair and her in her mahogany swivel chair behind the desk that looked to be entirely too big for the four-foot-eleven-inches tall woman. "Let's talk."

I stared at her for a moment, thinking my response through before opening my mouth to speak. "It's not that I don't like you, Carol." Her face fell when she realized I wasn't going to play along with her casual approach at a little chat, but I didn't waver. "It's just that . . . it's not something that I want to talk about yet."

"I understand that you don't want to talk about it, Bella," she said softly, "but the reason that we have these meetings every day is because you _need _to." She leaned forward in her chair to set her elbows on her desk.

I sighed. It had been two days since I'd begged Edward not to leave me Post-Panic Attack. "I know that. I do. But I . . ." I closed my eyes. I'd wanted to say something for days now, but it wouldn't come out. The words were now bubbling to my lips, but I held them back. I bit my lip.

"Doctor Cullen says that physically, you're doing wonderful," Carol mentioned. "You've responded well to the radiation treatments, and you've gotten most of your strength back. He said something about releasing you the other day . . ."

I sat up straighter, but my hopes stayed down. I knew where this was going. Glancing towards the door that I knew Edward was sitting on the other side of, I bit my lip harder.

". . . but he can't release you until we get to the bottom of these attacks," Carol concluded after I stayed silent. "They aren't good for your health, Bella. We need to find some way to help you so that they stop. But we can't help them go away if you don't tell us what causes them." Her hands folded themselves neatly in front of her as she maintained her calm composure.

Going home. Darn. That was a good card to play, and she knew it. I wanted to get out of this hospital so badly. I wanted to get back to normal. I'd started _one _day at my new school and so far I hadn't been back since. I corrected myself: I didn't just _want _normal, I _needed _it. The words bubbled up again, but this time, I didn't fight. In my mind, I was picturing Charlie sitting in the kitchen at the table, reading the newspaper. I was standing behind him, cooking dinner and telling him about my day – but it was a _good _day. There wasn't bad news. There weren't bloody images of my mother. I just smiled and pressed the buttons on the microwave; I was happy. And the Edward walked in, and he shook hands with my dad, and everything was perfectly fine. I spoke. "When I talk about it . . . I mean . . . I'm scared."

Carol's eyebrows shot up, and she smiled for a brief second at her success before composing her face with a blank, emotionless expression. "_Great_, Bella. Great, that's perfect. That's a perfect start. Tell me why."

"Why I feel scared?" I blew a breath out through my nose. "I . . . I _see _her."

"Who?" she asked. "Who do you see?"

"My mom." She would show up any second, lying dead on the floor. She would appear and I would be lost to the world for who knows how long this time.

"What is she doing?" she asked, but seemed to think of a better question, because she immediately followed with, "What do you mean, _see _her?"

I spilled my guts. I told her about the hallucinations in great deal. I told her about how I couldn't see anyone outside of them when I have an attack, but I can still hear what's going on around me. I told her about how realistic they are. I told her how often they happen, even though she already knew that answer. I just said anything that I could think of to describe them, and Carol just nodded and wrote things down on her notepad to tell Doctor Cullen later.

"When did they start, Bella?"

"Hmm?"

"When was the first hallucination?"

"I was . . ." I frowned, pulling my eyebrows together as I thought. "It was . . . uh, it happened right after . . ." I gasped. "I saw my mother's dead body, and I heard an officer telling my dad what had happened to her . . ."

"And what did happen to her?"

I closed my eyes, waiting for the room to be taken over by another world.

"Stay calm, Bella," my therapist instructed. "Breathe. Think of something that makes you happy. Think of something that makes you feel _safe_. Keep your mind on that thing or person or place. Are you thinking of something?"

_Edward. _"Yes," I croaked.

"Okay," she approved. "Continue when you're ready."

After two minutes of silent breathing and rapid blinking, I swallowed. "She was cooking," I said, using the softest voice I could muster up.

Carol leaned closer to hear. "Go on, Bella. You're doing fine. Think of your safe haven."

_Edward, Edward, Edward, Edward. You can do this, Bella. Edward's right outside. _"She was an awful cook. _That's _not something I could ever forget. She, Dad, and I basically lived off of microwaveable meals, pizza, and leftovers from restaurants. But every now and then, she would get this idea that she could cook, and so when it was Dad's turn to pick me up at my bus stop after school, she would start cooking something, and we'd be surprised when we walked through the door to smell real food." I stopped to laugh because I could see her standing in our kitchen in Phoenix, oven mitts on her hands and holding a wooden spatula upside down while mixing some sort of homemade sauce that she'd come up with on her own. "It didn't smell _good_, but she tried, and even though she failed almost _every _time, and we ended up ordering pizza, Dad and I would be grateful."

"Keep going, Bella," Carol encouraged me. "You're doing fantastic."

"The day she was –" I choked. "The day she –" I swallowed. The room suddenly looked darker, the happy green walls blackening.

"Safe haven, Bella."

_Edward. _I blinked the threatening images away. "She was cooking for us the day she was found. It was during the day. I was still in school. A police officer came and got me from my first grade classroom and took me to my dad . . ." I paused. "Who's idea was it to let a seven-year-old see her mother's dead body, anyway? I guess no one was really thinking . . . Dad was so upset . . ."

"How did she die, Bella?"

"Whatever she was cooking caught on fire," I whispered. "We don't know why she didn't stop it right away. The police thought she had maybe walked out of the room for a second, and when she walked back in, it was too big of a fire to stop by herself. They found her . . ."

"They found her?" Carol prompted me after a minute of me staring at the floor absently, remembering.

"They found her lying under a cabinet," I blurted quietly before it could slither back down my throat. "The fire must have burned it away from the wall or something – I don't know, the police officer's explanation wasn't something that I wanted to hear, so I ignored it – and it fell on her. She was pinned under it when the found her. The weight of the wood was too much for her to lift, and even though it falling on her only broke her hip and a few ribs, she died in the fire. The whole bottom floor of the house was ruined, but one of the neighbors called the fire department and _somehow_ they got there in time before the whole house went up. Anyway, it was too late for my mom at that point. The kitchen was rubbish. Her body was burned to the point where she was unrecognizable. But I still see her."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Bella," Carol said, her eyes brimming with tears. She whipped them away quickly. "What . . . er, what triggers your hallucinations, sweetie?"

"What do you mean?" My mind was distracted. I had just told that whole story to someone for the very first time out loud, and yet the images of my mother's burned body hadn't taken over my vision. My mind was caught on this fact, because I hadn't ever been able to think of that subject without one of them popping up.

"What usually happens before you see the images of your mother?"

_Edward. Edward. _"Um . . ." I swallowed. "It usually happens when someone . . . mentions her," I said. "Or, it happens when someone says something about hospitals. Or doctors. Or medication . . . or . . . anything like that." _Edward_.

"And yet, we've been throwing those words around this room for about half an hour, now, and . . . you've been panic-free." She grinned when I finally lifted my eyes from the floor to meet her gaze. "Why do you think that is, Bella?"

"Um . . . because of my safe haven?"

"Well, I'm sure that's part of it, yes," she agreed. "But I was actually thinking . . . you've been in this hospital for how many days, now, Bella?"

"Umm . . . about fourteen," I responded.

"How many times have you had a panic attack during those two weeks?"

"Um . . . two," I whispered.

"And I'm sure you've heard the terms _hospital _and _doctor _and _needle _and _medication_ being used, right?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't have a panic attack _every _time you heard one of these terms," she stated excitedly.

I shook my head. "No, I didn't."

"And so," Carol concluded triumphantly, "you obviously aren't having trouble hearing those familiar hospital terms anymore. You've seen the medical equipment that is commonly used, you've been in a hospital bed yourself, and you've had your fair share of IV needles during your visit. This means you aren't sensitive to _seeing_ a hospital or being _inside_ one."

"So . . . you're saying . . . that this unexpected visit . . . unintentionally cured me of that . . . stimulus?" I guessed.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," she confirmed. "But that statement might be wrong, depending on what caused your last attack yesterday."

"Um . . . I was telling Edward about my mom."

"Ah," she murmured, nodding to herself. Her pencil hadn't stopped moving since I'd started talking about thirty-five minutes ago. "And what were you saying when the images you see took over your body? What _exactly _had you been saying, Bella?"

"I was saying . . ." I hesitated, thinking and twiddling my thumbs in my lap. I clicked my tongue. "I was telling Edward what had brought me to the hospital originally – the panic attacks. I was telling him about my life in Phoenix. I was saying something about . . . living with my mom and dad . . . but I never got to mention dad. The attack took me over too soon."

"I see," she breathed, her head bobbing up and down. The hair resting on her shoulder bounced with it. "Tell me something, Bella." _Have I not been telling you things, Carol? _"What's the name of the hospital that your mother was taken to for Post-Death examination? The name of the hospital where you saw her body?"

"It was the –" I stopped.

"Go on."

"I can't," I whispered.

"And why not?"

"Not even my safe haven will keep the panic away."

Carol nodded. "That's understandable. You're frightened of what you know will happen when you allow yourself to think of it, to say it aloud. You don't have to. It's in your private records, so I know the answer already. But how about this? Can you tell me the name of _this _hospital?"

"Forks General," I responded, absently using the shortened nickname for the hospital I was currently _living _in, basically. "I mean, Forks General Hospital and Care Facility."

"You had no problems saying that."

"I –" I frowned. "I guess I didn't."

"Can you rattle off some medical terms for me, Bella?" Carol asked, her pen ready on her notepad. "Names of doctors, medical equipment, famous hospitals of the world?"

"Um . . . needles," I began. "And heart rate monitors. Hospital beds. Paper gowns. Wheel chairs. Surgery. Doctor Cullen. Saint Jude Hospital. Pills. Blood. Blood tests. Medical records. Pregnancy? Child birth –"

"That's enough, Bella, you can stop," Carol interrupted me. "Did you feel any panic coming on? Did saying any of those words cause you discomfort?"

"No," I whispered, shaking my head.

"That's just what I suspected," Carol said firmly. "I'm changing my diagnosis."

"Okay," I agreed, my eyebrows knitting together.

"You aren't sensitive to hospitals or medical terms," she repeated, probably for my own sake rather than hers. "You have the panic attacks with things related to your mother's death."

I flinched.

"I apologize," she said immediately. "You're Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is caused by the mentioning of your mother or the hospital she was taken to after her passing, or the situation that she was found in."

"How do I . . . fix myself?"

"You think about her," she said gently. "You think about the good times you had with her. You think about how happy you were together. You laugh, you cry, you _remember_. And when you think you're ready – at your own time, at your own speed, on your own terms – you think about that day. You think about how you felt. You think about your father's reactions. You think about her body, the situation, the aftermath of the fire when it came to your house. You'll be sad. You'll feel panicked, of course. For a while, that is. But you have to think of your safe haven. You have to be willing to push yourself to think about those things, Bella. On your own terms, when you're ready, you can help yourself get better, but I can't force you to do that. If you aren't ready to speak of those events, then it will only make things worse if I pressure you to relive them."

"But isn't that your job?" I interrupted. "Aren't you supposed to ask me hard questions and demand answers?"

Carol laughed, a light, carefree giggle. "That's what happens in most movies and books, and yes, that's a method that many therapists use during treatment, but each patient has their limits, and if those limits are pushed too far, permanent damage to the patient's mental state can occur. Each treatment differs with each patient. This is the path that will work for you in particular, Bella."

"Well, okay," I agreed.

"What else is on your mind, Bella?" Carol changed the subject. "Now that we've gotten past the hard stuff, is there anything else that you want to talk about?"

"Um . . . like what?"

Carol shrugged. "What else is on your mind? School? Work? _Boys_?" She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

"Well, I don't have a job anymore, because it was obviously in Phoenix, and I haven't found one around here yet," I told her. "And . . . umm . . . boys?"

"Is there a special boy at Forks High School that's caught your eye?"

"Well . . . there is . . . _one_."

"Ooh," she cooed. "Tell me! Oh, I love gossip! That's why I became a therapist, you know."

I stared.

She laughed. "Oh, I'm kidding, Bella. But really – who's the lucky boy?"

"If I tell anyone, he might find out accidentally," I explained. "If I keep it to myself, there's no way he can find out without me knowing about it."

"The information you give me is confidential, Bella," she assured me.

"Except when it comes to Doctor Cullen."  
"Doctor Cullen would never tell anyone that, and it wouldn't be something I share with him," she countered. "You're technically here to talk about your Post-Traumatic Stress, not your crushes, and so he has no right to that information. And why would it matter?"

"He has kids," I hinted.

"Oh, he would never tell his –" She stopped, her eyes darting to the door as her voice lowered. "Oh . . . oh, my . . . it's Edward! It's Edward Cullen, isn't it? Oh my!"

I nodded my head, blushing.

"That's . . . oh, he's such a sweet boy, Bella," she gushed. "You'd be perfect for each other."

"Therapist _and _matchmaker, huh?" I teased her, giggling.

She laughed with me, a carefree, relaxed laugh that made me laugh harder.

…

"How did it go?" Edward said doubtfully.

I smiled up at him, closing the door to Carol's office behind me with a click. "I did it, Edward. I finally did it. I told her what happened."

His eyes brightened. "Bella, that's fantastic! Did you have an attack?"

"I-I started to," I stuttered, "but Carol taught me something. I have to think about something that makes me feel safe and I'm okay. It's my safe haven."

"What is it?" he questioned. We started walking through the halls, back to my room, and I was thankful that the hospital had let me put on a pair of my own sweatpants and a hoodie so I didn't have to worry about anyone seeing my butt. "Your safe haven?" he continued.

"It's . . . silly," I whispered.

"I would never laugh at you, Bella."

"It's . . . well, it's . . . you," I answered softly, skimming my pinkie finger against the off-white walls of the hospital's hallways.

Edward stopped walking, resting his hand against the wall as I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets. He stepped in front of me, blocking my path, and we leaned against the wall. He curled his body above mine protectively. His face lowered closer to mine as he spoke, and I felt his words against my cheek. "Is that right?"

I nodded, unable to speak.

"I make you feel safe?"

Another nod.

He looked away, stunned. ". . . feels it, too," he muttered to himself, but I didn't ask him what he was talking about. It probably had something to do with whatever he didn't want to tell me yet.

"I think about you, and it's like, all the bad memories go away," I explained. "Ever since the first time we met – remember? In the office, on my first day, I had a panic attack, and Mrs. Cope called you, and –"

"Of course I remember," he whispered, grinning. His eyes shifted back and forth between my own. "That moment was the first moment I ever got to lay eyes on the most beautiful girl in the world."

I didn't think. I didn't stop and consider what the consequences of my actions might be. I didn't check to see if any of the doctors are watching, or think about if Edward would be offended.

I just leaned forward and peck a kiss on his cheek. I missed and kissed his jaw instead, but I smiled when I felt his lips press against my temple in return. I liked the affection, and for a moment, everything is absolutely perfect.

Neither one of us were surprised when our lips met in an easy, quick kiss that we didn't think twice about.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**Whooo! They kissed! FINALLY. **

**Okay, guys. I do have one request for you. I've gotten a few reviews, and I appreciate every single one that I get, I really do. But I was just wondering if you all could offer me more than a simple "Great job"? I really like feedback on my grammar, plot, things you like, things you didn't like . . . anything. I want to know what you guys want to see. I know I said the story is already written, but that doesn't mean I can't make changes. Thanks to everyone who reviews and has reviewed in the past, and any review is greatly appreciated. **

**My favorite quote from this story is:**

"Ooh," she cooed. "Tell me! Oh, I love gossip! That's why I became a therapist, you know."

**Or, I also like: **

"Tell me something, Bella." _Have I not been telling you things, Carol?_

**Please leave me a review with your thoughts. I love getting feedback from my readers and often get discouraged from posting my work if I don't get a lot of positive reinforcement. Thank you for reading! See you next chapter. **


	9. Chapter Nine

**I'm two days late with this, and I'm sorry! I don't even have an excuse. This time, I just forgot. Hopefully this Bella-and-Edward packed chapter will make it up to you.**

**Chapter Nine of Twenty-Nine**

**Edward's Point of View**

Carlisle didn't have to tell me about Bella's visit with her therapist this time, of course. I'd been sitting outside the room the entire time. I wouldn't have had to, but I'd promised Bella, and everyone knew that a male vampire can't break a promise he makes to his mate, whether his mate knows about her mate-status or not.

My heightened hearing had obviously allowed me to hear right into the room as if the large mahogany door wasn't built between us. I wished I could hear her mind more than anything, but I settled for her comments.

_She likes me. She trusts me. I'm her safe haven. _

Those facts coming out of her mouth were enough to hold me off from telling her about my true identity for a while. My father was right – she had so much on her mind that she couldn't handle what I would tell her. She would be frightened, and she would run. And my instincts would send me after her, and I would catch her, and she would be even more frightened.

I wanted to avoid that.

"Edward?"

My eyes shot to my mate – er, Bella. I would have to avoid calling her that out loud. "Yes?"

"Did your dad tell you the good news?" she asked.

"No," I lied, shaking my head and leaning forward to rest my forearms on my knees so that my face could be closer to her. I was sitting to her right in a chair close to her head. Bella was seated on her hospital bed, though no longer wearing hospital attire. "What's the good news?"

"I get to go home tonight!" she exclaimed, sitting up straighter and laughing. "Isn't that great? And I get to go to school tomorrow!"

I frowned. That hadn't been what I'd thought she'd say, though I knew that, too. "Yes, Bella, that's fantastic . . . but . . ."

"But what?" She was disappointed in my reaction, and I instantly felt awful for hurting her feelings.

I worked to fix it. "Not that that isn't fantastic news, sweetheart, but –" I didn't finish my sentence, for somehow, the nickname that I'd been calling her in my head had slipped out without my expectance. My eyes shot to Bella as I heard her gasp, but I relaxed when she giggled.

"I like that," she said. "I like that nickname."

I grinned sheepishly at her, and if vampires could blush, I would have. "I do, too," I teased. "But as I was saying . . . I just thought that maybe you'd gotten good news on your last blood test."

Her eyes brightened, and faded. "Your dad told you, didn't he? That was supposed to be _my _news," she complained. "But, yeah. The numbers went down again. The amount of leukemia cells free-floating in my blood stream lowered."

I stood, leaned over her, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "That's fantastic, Bella. Wonderful."

"_Aaaaand,_" she drawled, "I get to go home tonight!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm. "That's great, Bella. You've been in here for way to long."

"A little over two weeks," she added. "My dad hasn't been here in days. He has to work, especially knowing how high this hospital bill is going to be."

I frowned. "If you can't afford it, Bella, we can –"

"Don't," she snapped. "Don't offer to pay. Don't offer to _lend _me the money. Don't give me special treatment. We can handle our bills."

"But this was unexpected," I insisted. "You had no idea that you would be in here this long. And then there will be the bills for your leukemia treatments, because the radiation won't do the job of the chemotherapy, and –"

"I know!" she yelled, angrily fisting her bed sheets in her hands. "We'll work it out. Dad promised me I would be okay."

"You need the best care you can get, Bella," I said calmly, because my patience was being tried and I was about to lose my cap. Her father wasn't making a high salary at the police department. If she didn't get proper care, she wouldn't make it, and I would lose my mate forever. I couldn't live without her; I couldn't lose her. "Even if you can pay the hospital bill, I'm sure you'll want to have your chemotherapy at home, and –"

"Well, yes," she said.

"That costs a lot of money, Bella," I told her gently. I reached across the space between us and threaded our fingers together. She looked down at our hands and grinned for a second. "Having your care at home will be affordable for a while, but if you get really sick, they'll have to make a mini-hospital for you at your house with all of the equipment in this room, and then you'll have to pay someone to come and check on you every few hours, and though the night, and my father doesn't do house calls like that." I swallowed. "Bella, I want you to have the best doctors and the best medication so that . . . so that . . ."

"So that I won't die," she choked, and I looked up to see tears streaming down her face. I had her in my arms as quickly as I could without her noticing that I was moving inhumanly fast. She tucked her face in my neck and wound her arms around my throat as my hands began to rub up and down her back.

"That's not what I was going to say," I whispered. "You're not going to die, Isabella Swan. I won't let it happen."

"You can't stop it from happening," she sobbed. My heart – metaphorically – fell out of my chest and shattered to pieces at my feet at the sound. "You can't make the leukemia not kill me."

I almost said it. I almost exposed my family's secret right then and there without thinking about it. "You doubt me?" I teased, pretending to be insulted. My hand was still rubbing her back gently.

She sniffled and leaned away to look up at me. "I know you can't do anything, Edward. No one can. It's just the way things happened." Her eyes turned down. "Charlie will be devastated."

I closed my eyes and reached up to wipe my forehead and rub my eyes – a human action that I'd picked up over the years and taken to doing. "Stop saying that you're going to die," I begged her. "Please, Bella. I can't think about it." It was true. The protective vampire in me couldn't face the fact that his mate was sick and he could do nothing to help her. Although, my worries had slowly dwindled as I realized that Bella returned a portion of my affections for her – a portion, because she could never love me with the intensity that I love her – and the possibility of changing her into an immortal became an option. Bella was clinging to me for comfort now – maybe she would accept the truth about who I am in the long run. After all, fate had made her my mate.

"Okay," she whispered just as Carlisle walked swiftly into the room.

_Everyone decent? _

"Shut up," I said, too low and too fast for Bella to pick up. "Bella's not that kind of girl."

_But you'd be willing if she was? _

I didn't respond.

"Okay, Bella," he said conversationally. I looked up from Bella's face to see that he had a needle in his hand. I tensed. Bella had shown a personal hatred to needles. Carlisle smiled. "We're going to do the final blood test before you're release. Are you ready?"

Bella turned and buried her face in my neck. Her hair was soft on my neck as she nodded and stuck out her arm.

_Will you be staying for this, Edward? _

"Yes," I responded again with a speed to fast for Bella's ears to pick up. "Her blood doesn't burn my throat. She needs me here for comfort. I can't leave."

He blinked at me, nodded, and prepared Bella's arm for the needle. I heard her heart rate increase as she anticipated the pinch of the needle, and I rubbed her back at a slower, more calming pace. "Talk to me, Bella," I encouraged. "Don't think about it. It will be over in a second. Tell me how excited you are to be going back to school tomorrow."

She smiled against my throat. "I'm so excited, Edward," she repeated herself from earlier. "It's going to be so great to be back to normal – even though I'm sure everyone will be asking me questions about . . . everything."

"Naturally, they'll all want to stick their nose where it doesn't belong, yes," I agreed. Over her head, I watched Carlisle insert the needle into Bella's arm. It filled with blood instantly, and the sight would normally awaken the monster inside me, but even he wasn't raddling against his cage. This was our mate – we could never hurt her. I heard Bella suck in a sharp breath at the pain of the needle. "Almost done," I whispered in her ear, turning my head to press a kiss to her temple.

She just sighed and I watched her squeeze her eyes shut.

Carlisle removed the needle moments later. "All done," he murmured. "That was wonderful, Bella. I'll have this processed in about half an hour, and _when_ the results show what I _know _they will, I'll clear you to be released, call Charlie, and you'll be on your way."

Bella smiled. "Thank you, Doctor Cullen. For everything."

Carlisle tucked the needle away, scribbling on his clipboard. "No need to thank me, Bella. It's my job. And I want to see you get better."

"Thank you," I echoed Bella quietly. "For saving helping her. For helping my mate."

Carlisle met my gaze for only a moment, not long enough for Bella to realize that we're communicating. _Of course, Edward. You know I'd do anything for you, and that extends to your mate, as well. Speaking of your mate . . . Alice hopes you'll come home tonight. She has a vision to show you. And Emmett and Jasper want the two of us to accompany them on a hunting trip tomorrow evening. _

"Tell Alice I might make it home tonight," I sighed, "but I make no promises. It all depends on Bella now. Everything I do depends on what Bella's doing, where she is, what she needs."

_I understand that, _Carlisle thought. He was standing, updating the whiteboard in front of her bed that would tell Bella's nurses what she needed or what needed to be done. He finished, capped the dry-erase marker, and turned to Bella. "Jenny will be in later to help you pack up your things and get ready to go home, once I okay the dismissal. Okay?" Jennifer had been one of the nurses that Bella hadn't hated or felt bitter towards.

Bella nodded. "Okay."

"I can help her," I spoke up.

"It's required that a nurse help the patients, Edward," Carlisle said, frowning. "Perhaps Bella will want you to accompany her home and help her get settled in – with the permission Chief Swan, of course."

Bella's heart skipped a beat. I fought a smile. "Will you, Edward?" she asked. "Will you come with me?"

I met her gaze. "Of course I will, sweetheart."

Carlisle was shocked at my term of endearment, but didn't show it. "I'll be back later with the news." When he was gone, Bella slid off my lap and climbed onto the hospital bed.

"Let's watch TV," she suggested.

I had absolutely no interest in any television show, but I agreed anyway just to see the smile on her face when she laughed at a pointless joke that was made. She was absolutely the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, I thought to myself. I'm the luckiest man in the world.

_Unless she doesn't accept you_, the monster in me sneered.

She will, I thought. She will accept me. She's Bella.

_Even if she does, what if she doesn't want to become a vampire? _the monster countered.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I thought, dismissing the thought immediately. I couldn't allow myself to think about that – I'd lose my mind.

…

I hated it that it had to be raining during the first moment that Bella stepped outside the hospital in two weeks. Bella hated the rain. I silently wished that one of my family members had been given the gift of weather contortion at the time of their transition to vampirism – I mean, Alice could see the future, Jasper could manipulate emotions, and I could read minds. Why couldn't Rose or Emmett or Esme or Carlisle have been given this special gift. It wasn't an impossible wish, but it still wouldn't be happening.

Although, if it had been sunny, I would have been forced to leave Bella in order to keep the secret of my family and our diamond-shining-sunlight-skin out of the minds of the humans around us.

I was currently standing just inside the woods next to the Swans' house. The rain was pouring down so hard that I had to take a few steps back to avoid being completely drenched. My mind was trained on Bella. I watched her through the eyes of her father, though his mind. Charlie Swan was helping her unpack her hospital bag and secretly making sure that she was in perfect health. Well, as perfect as her health can be when she's affected with . . . with a blood cancer.

_"What do you want for dinner, Bells?" _Charlie Swan asked his daughter. _"I can't cook, obviously, but . . . oh, God, wait, I didn't mean to say that, I just –" _

_ "It's okay, Dad," _Bella insisted. Though Charlie's eyes, I watched her tuck a piece of hair. Charlie was thinking very loudly, worriedly, about possibly having reminded his daughter of her mother's bad cooking, and ultimately, her mother. He was worried about a possible relapse after she'd come so far. But Bella's face was completely calm as she spoke. _"I'm fine. Carol gave me a technique to use when I think about Mom. It's okay, really. I'm fine."_

Charlie's mind calmed. _"That's great, Bells. That's great. It's wonderful that you can think about that . . . about Renee . . . and not . . . uh, I mean, and –" _

_ "Dad, calm," _Bella laughed._ "Let's go get something to eat. I . . . um . . . I invited Edward Cullen to have dinner with us." _

Bella had asked me to join them at the hospital while the nurse helped her pack her belongings. The thought of eating human food made me want to hide under a rock and never come out. If I ate the food Bella would prepare, I would only have to choke it up later, but it had always been an unpleasant activity. I'd agreed nonetheless.

Charlie watched Bella twist her fingers nervously in front of her. _"Is that okay? I mean, can he come over?" _she asked. _"You aren't mad that I invited him, are you?" _

_ "Of course," _Charlie responded. _"I'd love to meet him." _

_ "You've already met him, Dad. You know who Edward is." _

Charlie laughed. _"Yes, I know him, but I've never met him as your boyfriend before." _

He watched Bella bite her lip. _"I don't know if he wants to be my boyfriend, Dad. I just invited him because he's spent so much time at the hospital lately, and he's brought me all my work and filled me in on what was happening in Biology class, and he's been so comforting, and he kept me company when you were at work, so . . . I want to thank him." _

Charlie sobered himself. _"I know, Bells. I'll be on my best behavior. I, too, have to thank him for that. He was there for you when I . . . couldn't be." _

_ "You had to work, Dad," _Bella said. _"I don't blame you for not being there. It's okay." _

Bella smiled at her father. _"Thank you, Dad."_

I watched as Charlie's eyes followed his daughter as she walked towards a window of her bedroom. I was standing on the side of the house that was closest to Bella's room, and so my eyes were instantly drawn to the window that she was moving towards. Stepping back deeper into the woods, just in case I was visible to Bella from that high up, I smiled, knowing that she was looking for me. I'd told her that I wasn't going to go far when I dropped her off at her house – her father had been at work when Carlisle dismissed Bella (I'd had to tell her that to ease her anxiety, and it's impossible for a male vampire to lie to his mate) and she had been too restless to wait for him. But my mind wandered . . . Had Bella known that I had been speaking in a very literal sense when I said I wasn't going far, and was she now looking for me outside her window? Or was she simply looking out her window to see the beauty of the forest around her? I saw the curtain move above me with my own eyes at the same moment I watched Bella move it from in her house through Charlie's mind.

It would have been too much for a human mind to handle, but I'd grown used to it – in my mind, there were too screens that seemed to be located right in front of my eyes. One screen showed me the mind I was reading, and the other showed me what I was actually personally seeing. I could go back and forth between the two in an instant. All I had to do was look back and forth, as if I were watching two TV screens at once. I could either watch one screen at a time, or take a metaphorical step back and watch them both. At that moment, I was watching both inside her house and out.

_"Edward," _I heard Bella whisper.

I looked up to see her peeking through the curtains, scanning the edge of the forest curiously.

That was when I realized that Bella was much more perceptive of my between-the-line comments, and that keeping my secret from Bella without lying to my mate was going to be impossible.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**My favorite quote from this chapter is: **

"I wouldn't have had to, but I'd promised Bella, and everyone knew that a male vampire can't break a promise he makes to his mate, whether his mate knows about her mate-status or not."

**I like this sentence simply because of the combination of 'mate-status'. It's weird for me to think about Edward talking - thinking - in such an informal manner, so I just had to add that in the chapter. **

**Thank you all for your wonderful reviews! I so appreciate them. I did not respond to every review, but I did read every single one of them. **

**Please review again this chapter! Let me know your thoughts, your predictions (because remember - this story is already complete on my computer!), and your favorite lines from Chapter Nine. **

**See you next chapter. **


	10. Chapter Ten

**Ahhhh . . . I'm late with this chapter, too, I know! I'm so busy these days.**

**This is more or less a fluff chapter, but it's still very important, and (I believe) still entertaining. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter Ten of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

The table was set, the food was ready, and I was excited. It had only been about two hours since Edward had dropped me off at my house with a quiet promise of returning. I'd felt his presence the entire time I was unpacking. It was intense. In fact, _everything_ I was feeling for Edward was intense. But I hoped that tonight would rise the option for him to open up to me and explain everything that I'd overheard he and Carlisle discussing at the hospital during my not-sleeping hours.

The sun was already setting at that point of the day. Charlie worked at the station from six in the morning to twelve in the afternoon, and then he would come home until his second shift at three in the afternoon to seven at night. It had been something he'd taken to doing when he'd been given the title of Chief of Police. But, his later working hours meant that we had to eat dinner at a later hour. I'd told Edward to be at my house around quarter to eight. It was now seven thirty.

I was bouncing around the kitchen like a druggie.

"Bella, you'll scare the boy if you don't calm yourself down," Charlie teased from the living room. I heard the soft sounds of a baseball game floating out of the television.

"He'll be here soon, Dad," I said, ignoring his comment, "and are you even dressed?"

"What do you mean, am I even dressed?"

"Are you dressed nicely?" I asked, rounding the threshold of the kitchen and poking my head into the living room. "Aren't you going to change?" He was wearing a plain gray T-shirt with his old, ratty jeans and socks that had found religion.

I laughed inside my head at my mental joke – _his socks were holey!_ – and crossed my arms. Charlie scuffed. "Just because you took an hour to pick out your outfit doesn't mean I'm gonna care about my appearance that much. That boy doesn't have to think I look good. He just has to know that I've got a gun and that I know how to use it."

I gasped. "You aren't going to do that cleaning your gun at the table when he walks in thing that dads do in movies, are you?"

My dad laughed, "Naw, Bells. I'd never embarrass you like that. But, you know, my weapon belt just happens to hang at the front entrance . . ."

I ran to the front door so fast I was probably a blur. I heard him laughing in the other room as I rushed past with his belt in hand and climbed the stairs. I threw open his bedroom door, gently placed the belt on his bed so I wouldn't accidentally shoot myself if I threw the gun and it went off, and descended the stairs at a slower pace. When I got to the bottom, my heart was pounding loud in my head, and I was gasping for breath.

"Nice show, Bella," Charlie commented, chuckling to himself.

"Thanks," I panted sarcastically. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of someone's headlights turn into our driveway and heard a car motor stutter to a stop. A car door slammed closed, and I panicked. "He's here, Dad! He's here, oh my God, he's here, get up! He's here! Dad!"

"I got it, I heard you," Charlie grumbled, pushing himself off of the couch and cracking his back.

There was a knock on the door. My heart fluttered. "He's –"

"_Here_," Charlie interrupted. "I got it. Are you getting the door, or am I?"

"I'll get it!" I squealed, but not loud enough for Edward to hear outside. I skipped to the door quietly, took a second to calm myself down, and threw the door open swiftly. There he was, leaning against the doorframe, smiling crookedly down at me. He was wearing the same gray sweatshirt he'd worn that morning to drop me off at my house, along with the same dark jeans and gray and black tennis shoes. His messy red-brown hair was even messier from him running his long fingers through it during our time apart. He curled his torso in so that he was hovering over me in the same protective way that he always had when I was in the hospital, bringing his face closer to mine by default. I smiled up at him. "Hey," I whispered, our hands meeting for the brief moment of bliss that always accompanied our skin-to-skin contact.

"Good evening," he greeted me. His eyes lifted to the space above my head, and he straightened. "Hello, Chief Swan."

"Edward," my dad greeted from behind me. I glanced back to see him standing in the doorway of the living room, arms crossed, stone-faced. "How nice of you to join us. Come in, please."

I looked back to Edward, grinning. "C'mon, dinner's ready."

He stepped into the house, sliding his coat off of his shoulders and stepping out of his shoes. I grabbed his coat as it fell off of his body and hung it on the coat rack next to the door, deliberately choosing the hook that Dad's belt had previously been hanging on. "The kitchen is through there," I said, pointing.

"Okay," he said, but stood there awkwardly, watching me. When I raised an eyebrow curiously, he stated, "Ladies first."

I laughed. "Okay."

Charlie was seated at his normal chair at the head of the table, his fork and knife in either hand. "Sit down right here, Edward," he ordered, nodding his head to the chair to his left. That left me to sit down to his right, across from Edward. Edward scooted his chair in with a soft screech, and I did the same.

The food was already sitting on the table in bowls, so all we had to do was dig in.

I watched Edward, waiting for him to make the first move. When he didn't, Charlie grew impatient and picked up the bowl of vegetables and dumped half of it on his plate.

"Dad," I scolded.

"Well, I'm not gonna wait around all night for dinner," he said matter-of-factly. "Go on, Edward, dig in. Let's go, we gotta eat so we can watch the game."

"I'm sure Edward doesn't want to watch baseball, Dad," I mumbled.

"Baseball is fine," Edward interjected.

I met his gaze, and he grinned crookedly at me. I smiled back as I scooped a spoonful of mashed potatoes onto my plate. During one of his visits in the hospital, he'd told me that he wasn't much of a sports fan. Maybe that was Edward's way of making a good impression on my father.

"Go on, Ed, the food's waiting for ya," Dad prompted. Edward still hadn't made a move.

I glanced up at him from my chicken and mashed potatoes. He was eyeing the food, glancing back and forth between all of the choices. His mouth was twisted up in a disgusted grimace.

My stomach turned. He didn't think my cooking looked good.

Normally, I wouldn't be bothered by someone not finding my food desirable. Something about Edward's rejection stabbed me in the gut in a way that I hadn't ever felt before. I felt the tears spring to my eyes unexpectedly, and I pushed back from the table. "I'll be right back, I have to use the ladies' room," I excused myself.

"Bells?" Charlie called, but his voice was muffled from the spoonful of potatoes he'd just shoved in.

"Bella?" Edward echoed him. I heard one of their chairs move, and knew right away that it wasn't Charlie. He wouldn't leave the table with his food still on his plate.

"Bella, what's wrong?" I heard Edward say behind me.

I didn't respond because the tears were running silently down my face and I didn't trust my voice not to waver. I climbed the stairs two at a time, gripping the railing to keep from tumbling back down. When I reached the bathroom, I locked the door behind me, but not quick enough to avoid glancing back to see Edward rapidly climbing the stairs behind me.

I sat down on the toilet, wiping my eyes as fast as I could so that I wouldn't be in the bathroom longer than necessary. But Edward was at the door already, knocking gently. "Bella? Is something wrong? Can you open the door?"

I shook my head, not caring that he couldn't see me. Or maybe he could – maybe he had X-Ray vision. After all, he wasn't normal; that much I knew.

"Bella?" he called. "Bella, please open the door. What's wrong? What did I do?"

I took a deep, shaky breath and responded, "I'll be right out, Edward. I'm fine, really." Why was I acting like such a baby? I'd made things before that Charlie took on his fishing trips and gotten news back that Billy Black hadn't really been a big fan. _That _opinion hadn't hurt me in the slightest. I didn't understand the sudden wounded feeling in my heart.

"Bella, I can hear your sobs," he choked, his voice slightly strained and weak. "Please, open the door. Let me comfort you. What's happened? Think of your safe haven!"

"It's not that, Edward," I answered. My mother was the last thing on my mind. "Please, just go down and . . . and . . ." _Go down and eat the dinner that I prepared for you!_

"Bella," he called again, desperate.

"Go away, Edward!" I yelled.

"Just let her be, Edward, she'll come around," I heard Charlie say softly from the bottom of the steps. Our bathroom was the first room at the top.

"Bella?" Edward asked. "I'll be downstairs, okay? I'll wait for you, and we can eat together."

"No we can't," I said, my brain's filter not working properly. "You don't want to eat what I made." I realized what I had said and slapped a hand over my mouth, gasping.

"What on earth are you talking about?" he asked through the door. "Bella, the dinner you prepared looks excellent."

"Stop lying," I demanded, figuring that I'd already brought up the topic so I might as well continued it. "I saw the way you looked at it."

He was silent for a moment. Then, "Bella, please open the door."

"No," I complained. "Just . . . go." I looked down at my fingers, twisting them around my shirt, and the tears began to slow.

"Do you want me to go home, love?"

I ignored his _love _because I was upset with him at that moment and I did _not_ want his terms of endearment. "Just leave me alone!"

"Edward, she'll come out when she's ready," Charlie said. "Obviously one of us did something that her teenage girl mind deems unacceptable. Man, I hope it was you, because _I _can't escape her wrath like you can."

"Bella, I'm going downstairs," Edward said glumly.

I swallowed.

Ten minutes passed, at least, and I sat in the bathroom, trying to figure out what had happened to me. Why had I reacted so intensely to Edward's rejection? It wasn't even really a rejection. I'd never felt the hurt and disappointment that I'd felt in that moment before. I tried to understand what was making me feel this way about him, tried to sort out my feelings for him. I wanted answers. I wanted to know what he and his father were talking about in the hospital a few days ago. I wanted to know why I felt so attached to him. I wanted to know why it hurt me to be away from him. I needed answers, but I was too afraid to ask the questions that I needed to in order to get them.

Eventually, after about fifteen minutes had passed and I'd heard Edward climb the stairs twice and wait on the other side of the door for a minute before leaving again, I emerged from the bathroom and descended the stairs. Edward and Charlie were watching baseball in the living room. I didn't stop for chit-chat, for my stomach was growling and I wanted to eat the dinner I'd made. I went straight into the kitchen and picked up the bowls that hadn't been touched since I'd fled the scene. One by one, I put them in the microwave to heat them up.

Edward waited a few minutes before entering the kitchen with me. He sat down at the seat he'd previously occupied, and said nothing; he watched me.

I ignored him, heating up my well-prepared dinner for myself because I doubted he'd be eating it.

"Oh, man!" Charlie yelled at the game from the other room. I could picture him shooting up to his feet as the team made a bad move. "Edward, you just missed the worst inning I've ever seen them play!"

Edward chuckled. "That's a shame."

I shot him a sideways glance, but turned my head when he met my gaze. His face softened. "Bella, love, please talk to me. Tell me my mistake."

I shook my head, dishing out some food on a clean plate for myself. I was over it. I honestly didn't want to think about it anymore.

"Bella," he pressed.

I shook my head again.

"Please, sweetheart."

I didn't acknowledge him.

He stood up, making his way to the counter that I was leaning against. I felt his presence behind me before I saw his hands come to rest on either side of my hips on the counter; he caged me in.

"I wish you'd speak to me," he whispered next to my ear. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, love. Please, please bless me with the sound of your voice. I'm afraid I miss it terribly." I couldn't tell if he was being serious or extremely sarcastic.

He leaned his head down, trying to peak around to see my face, but I childishly turned my head. He chuckled. "Bella," he said, "are we having our first argument?"

I shrugged.

I felt his lips press against my temple. "Bella," he whispered. You'd have thought by now that I'd have gotten tired of hearing him say my name over and over, every few words, but every time he said it, I fought a smile. "Sweetheart, please, talk to me."

"I don't know what's happening," I whispered.

He leaned closer, encouraged by my verbal response. "What?"

"I feel . . . I feel . . ." I hesitated.

He kissed my cheek, and I felt his chest press against my back. "What do you feel?"

"Confused," I respond softly.

"What confuses you?"

I knew I was going to sound cheesy and cliché, but I spoke anyway. "The way you make me feel."

He smiled against my temple. "How do I make you feel?"

"I . . ." _Just be honest, Bella. Maybe you'll get an explanation for everything that hasn't made sense. _"I think . . . I mean . . . I don't like it when you leave," I admitted. "I miss you. And . . . you make me feel safe. And . . . I . . . I like you . . . a lot."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," I breathed. I was still standing with my back to him, but I was now leaning against his chest.

"Well, that's great, because I like you, too," he responded. "Now, do I get dinner, or did I already blow my chance?"

"You can have food," I allowed. Turning my head to meet his eyes, I watched him smile.

"Wonderful," he said.

The butterflies in my stomach returned, and I felt my anger drift away. I still wanted answers, but at least he ate my food.

…

"I'll pick you up for school tomorrow," Edward said as he slipped his coat on. We were standing in the dimly-lit hall in front of our front door after spending a wonderful evening together. Charlie had finally gone upstairs to give us some privacy, though I'd seen him peek down stairs multiple times to make sure we really had been just watching TV. We had watched random televisions shows, talked about the same old nothings that we had in the hospital, and – dare I say it? – we'd _cuddled _a little, although I'd never use that word around Edward.

I was at peace. I was happy.

I smiled up at him. "Great," I said, "what time?"

"Seven?"

"Okay," I agreed.

Our hands threated together in front of us, and Edward gave a gentle tug to pull me to his chest. His other arm wrapped around the small of my back while our hands remained connected. I pressed my face into his neck, breathing in his scent. I felt his lips press against my temple gently. I sighed. "Don't go," I whispered. "I'll miss you." We were beyond holding back our emotions by now. Within an hour, I'd become more open with Edward than I'd ever been with _anyone _in my entire life. It scared me, but thrilled me at the same time.

"I'll miss you, too," he responded. "I already do."

"Then don't go," I pressed. "You could . . . I don't know . . . hide under the kitchen sink until Charlie goes to sleep."

He laughed. "What would I wear to school tomorrow? And more importantly, how would I explain that to my family?"

"I don't know," I giggled.

His eyes flickered above my head, and the soft pathway his hand had been drawing on my back stopped. "I should go," he said. "Chief Swan is growing impatient with our goodbye."

I turned, throwing an irritated look at my father, who was standing at the bottom of the steps, watching us. "Dad," I scolded.

Charlie held his hands up, palms out, in an innocent gesture. "Just . . . observing."

"Go!" I yelled.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Bella," Edward said softly, but his eyes were sad.

I'm sure mine were, too. "Okay."

He opened the door, threw me one last glance, and then with a click, he was gone before I had time to smell the rain that was falling rapidly. I rushed to the window if the kitchen that overlooked the front yard. Peering out, I watched him get in his shiny silver Volvo and start the engine. His windshield wipers started up immediately as his lights flashed on. He backed out of our driveway, slowly, and sped off.

I missed his presence immediately.

"I'm going to bed, Dad," I mumbled as I passed him. He'd already reclaimed his spot on the couch in the living room.

He glanced at the clock. "It's only ten o'clock, Bells."

"Yeah, well, I've gotta get up early for school tomorrow, so I wanna be well rested."

He raised an eyebrow. "Or, you wanna get your beauty sleep for when you see Edward tomorrow."

I shrugged, smirking, and shot up the stairs.

…**..**

When I woke in the morning, I sat up and stretched, groaning a little at the feeling. I tilted my head to the side to crack my neck, and before I stood to go to the bathroom, I looked down at my pillow.

My heart sunk. There were a few clumps of my own hair lying where my head had been two seconds ago. More than two or three strands. I gasped, my hand going straight to my head.

I flew to the bathroom faster than I had ever moved before, grabbing a handheld mirror and spinning around to check out the back of my head. I synchronized my hair, looking for any bald spots that had appeared. There were none, but a new fear had set in.

_It's just a small thinning, _I told myself. _Dr. Cullen said it would happen, but it won't be noticeable. It's not noticeable. No one can tell. _

But my heartbeat wouldn't slow. I wouldn't calm down.

* * *

**Aww, Edward's so clueless . . . what did you think? Did you think Bella was acting too childishly? Do you think she's getting closer to figuring out his secret? Let me know! This chapter was real in-site to what's going to happen in the future – foreshadowing, and what not. Edward and Bella's relationship is going to be a very confusing one, I'll tell ya that.**

**As I said before, this was a fluff chapter, except for the ending. Hopefully this was still entertaining for you. **


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this chapter. **

**Chapter Eleven of Twenty-Nine**

**Bella's Point of View**

"So," Alice Cullen drawled. She leaned over the isle in our history class, smiling. "You're back."

I shrugged. "I guess I am."

Her smile faded. "Um . . . I heard about . . . you know . . ."

"My leukemia," I finished, nodding. _Don't think about this morning, _I ordered myself, but the image of my hair on my pillow flashed anyway. I pushed it away. "Yeah, I figured you would have. Your dad is my doctor, after all. He's great, by the way."

"Well, _we _all think so," she agreed, referring to her family, but her smile hadn't returned. It was odd to see Alice not smiling – the little pixie always seemed to be grinning. "But that's not how I found out. Dad's not allowed to tell us things like that about his patients. Doctor-patient-confidentiality, ya know?"

I nodded. "That's comforting. But . . . but he told Edward."

Alice frowned. "He didn't tell Edward. Edward . . . snooped." And then, as if someone had called her name, her head whipped to the left, staring out the door it seemed. Her eyebrows pulled together. She stared for a moment before her expression lightened and she looked back over to me. I ignored her weird behavior. "He's not a stalker," she told me. "He's just . . . I mean, he really likes you, Bella."

"That's good," I said, "because I like him, too."

Alice smiled and opened her mouth to speak, but she was interrupted by Mrs. Hathaway entering the classroom with a pile of freshly-printed worksheets. "Okay, class," she began loudly, interrupting the conversations that the other students were holding as well, "the answers to this worksheet can be found on page one hundred seventy-three in your textbooks." A brown-haired boy raised his hand. "Let me guess, Finn. You don't have your book. That's just too bad – maybe you can share with a buddy, but I don't have any spares. Looks like you'll be having homework tonight. Anyway, you'll be working in silence for the first half an hour of class –" She was interrupted with groans and complaints being made by the class, but it didn't faze her. "– _and_ _then _for the last ten minutes, I'll let you pretend to check your answers with a partner and ask questions while you really socialize and talk about who's dating who and who's fighting with who. Sound good?"

Some kids protested, saying that the partnered time should be more equal with the separate time, but Mrs. Hathaway ignored them. I thought she was being pretty cool for giving us free time during class.

As she began passing out the handouts, Alice looked back to me. "You're Edward's first girlfriend since . . ." she paused, thinking. "Since . . . hmm . . . oh! You're his first girlfriend since Tanya Denali when we lived in Alaska about two years ago. He broke her poor little heart . . . but that's okay, because she was mean and evil and only wanted Edward 'cause he bought her nice presents. He dumped her and hasn't liked anyone since . . . well, _now _he does, 'cause he likes you, a lot, but he hasn't since her. And it's really refreshing to see him so hung up over a girl, 'cause it's been so long, and we were all worried that he was gay now or something – which wouldn't be an _issue _but really, that'd be just weird –" She stopped suddenly, her eyes flashing as if she'd just remembered something, and she sucked in a breath. I laughed, but she pushed on. "It's just nice to see him with a nice, innocent, compassionate girl like you, Bella," she concluded. With that, she turned back in her seat to face forward just in time to snatch the papers out of the hands of the boy in front of her as he passed them back. She tossed them over her shoulder at the girl behind her, who failed to catch them, and I stifled a laugh when they went all over the floor.

When my mind caught up with what Alice had said, I gasped. She'd called me Edward's girlfriend. _Girlfriend. _His girlfriend! Had Edward referred to me as his girlfriend at home? Or maybe he'd just said '_my girl_'. That's always cute, too. When guys refer to their girlfriends as their girl, I mean. My mind wandered, thinking of the wonderful feelings that being Edward's girlfriend had given me, when being smacked with the handouts that were being passed back my row woke me. I'd never heard Edward call me that with my own ears – maybe Alice had just assumed . . . I couldn't be sure until I had real confirmation from Edward himself.

I also realized that hearing that Edward had broken some girl's heart didn't worry me at all; he would never hurt me that way. _That _I was sure of.

The half an hour of silence passed quickly because I'd already covered this information in my school in Phoenix and therefore didn't need to look up the answers on the worksheet. I spent about twenty minutes of the silent time reliving my evening with Edward last night – how happy I was when he had held my hand, how glad I was when he kissed my temple, how safe I felt in his arms, and – oddly – how surprised I was that Charlie had let him stay so late. I hadn't been thinking of that last one last night.

"Alright, there's twelve minutes left," Mrs. Hathaway said from her desk at the front of the room. "Look, I'm even giving you two extra minutes of gossip time. I should be your favorite teacher."

Alice swung her legs over to the side so that she was facing me full-on, her paper already tucked into her binder and placed in her backpack. "Did you get finished?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

She grinned her normal wide-lipped smile. "Fantastic," she breathed. "So, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, Edward's relationship with Tanya. Can you believe that he slept with her after she was always so demanding?"

My heart sank. He wasn't a virgin? I didn't know why, but that really disappointed me. "He . . . they slept together. As in . . . ya know . . . _sex_?"

Alice laughed. "Duh. I can't believe he did it. She was so disgusting. And another thing, she –"

"Um, Alice?" I interrupted. "Can we please not talk about Edward's past relationships?"

Alice stopped. "Of course, Bella, I'm sorry. I didn't think to realize that it would make you uncomfortable. I'm guessing you guys haven't had that awkward exes talk yet? You haven't mentioned your old flames to each other?"

"No," I said, blushing.

"Do _you _have any wild old flames, Bella?"

I laughed. "No way, Alice. Edward is the . . . the first _crush _I've ever had on anyone. I've never had a real . . . relationship."

Alice frowned. "Oh."

I looked away, staring out the window. "It's pathetic, I know. I'm sixteen years old and a sophomore in high school, and I've always been single."

"Well, you have my brother now," she said. "And no, it's not pathetic. It's refreshing to know a girl who hasn't jumped into bed with the first guy to flirt with her a little."

I hesitated. " . . . Thank you . . ."

She laughed, and the lunch bell rang. "C'mon. Edward wants you to sit with my family again at lunch. He's saving you a seat, he told me."

I looked up at her from my seat, smiling. "Okay."

…

"So, the weather's supposed to be nice tomorrow, I hear," Emmett said.

We were all sitting around the Cullens' usual table in the Forks High School cafeteria. Everyone had a tray of food in front of them, but like the first day of school, my tray was the only one that had been _really _touched. Emmett was tossing his apple back and forth between his hands, Rosalie was picking at a bowl of mac and cheese with a fork but had yet to raise any to her mouth, and Jasper was sharing a piece of pie with Alice. They were using one fork.

Edward had offered to buy my lunch today, but I'd packed my own lunch and had to eat my sandwich or it would to go waste. So I had to regretfully decline.

Jasper raised an eyebrow. "And where did you hear that from?"

"Our reliable weatherman," Rosalie added.

Alice rolled her eyes. "I think Emmett's point of bringing that point up was to tell Bella what we won't be in school tomorrow."

I looked up from my bag of chips. "_None _of you will be here? Why not?"

"When the weather's nice, we go camping with our parents," Emmett informed me.

"I'm sure there's some way we could get out of it this time," Edward said next to me. "It's rude of us to adopt Bella into our family and leave her while we go on outings."

"How do you expect us to get out of it, Edward?" Alice snapped. "It's not like we can just stop it from happening. We can't just . . . be normal."

"I'm not following," I interjected.

They ignored me. "Maybe Bella can come with us," Emmett suggested.

Edward's eyes snapped to Jasper and back to his brother. "You know that's impossible, Emmett."

"Maybe we wouldn't have to go _hiking_," Emmett snarled, leaning forward to place his palms on the table as he rose to a semi-crouch, his apple forgotten. "_Maybe _we could hang at our house for the day. Maybe Esme could make lunch and we could watch a _movie _instead."

"It's been _too long _since we've went hiking," Edward countered, his stance mirroring Emmett's exactly. Alice grabbed my hand and tugged me back a few steps, pushing us both behind Jasper. This argument was escalating quickly. They were attracting the attention of many students in the cafeteria, plus the teacher supervisors sitting by the trash cans. I saw two of them stand and begin to make their way over to us.

"Alice, they're going to get in trouble," I whispered.

She waved me off, watching her brothers. I peeked out around her arm to see Edward and Emmett arguing right in each other's faces now. They weren't touching, but I knew that it was only a matter of seconds before one of them threw a punch. A ways behind them, Rosalie stood, arms crossed, looking frustrated with her boyfriend.

I suddenly realized that I couldn't hear the words that Edward and Emmett were saying anymore. It didn't make sense; they were close enough that I should have been able to hear every word. I was confused . . . what was I missing here?

Just before one of the teachers reached them, Emmett backed away from Edward and kicked the chair that he had been sitting on. But instead of the chair screeching across the floor a few inches and coming to an abrupt halt like a human being would expect. No, it flew.

It flew so far and so fast that it left the ground.

It flew so far and so fast that it smashed into one of the large glass window that technically made up an entire wall of the school. An entire wall that smashed to pieces. And left a whole section of the wall of the Forks High cafeteria open.

It was inhuman. It was terrifying.

But I didn't have time to think about how Emmett was able to do it.

Everyone covered their ears as the crash echoed through the café. Girls screamed, boys hooted and hollered, and the entire Cullen clan stood motionless.

Everything was silent for a moment. And then all hell broke loose.

I shivered as the new hole in the wall allowed the cold air and rain to enter the cafeteria. The Cullens were all staring at the glass wall that was now in ruins. I was close to hyperventilating; I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel my pulse pounding in my breasts. I closed my eyes shut so tightly that I saw rainbow colors and opened them again. The damage was still there.

"Holy . . . _crow_," I whispered.

My voice seemed to snap the Cullens out of their panic.

Alice exhaled. "Well, it looks like we won't need an excuse for missing school tomorrow," she joked, but her normally light, teasing voice had been replaced with a shocked, worried, panicked tone. "I don't think there'll be school."

Edward rushed to my side, sliding one arm around my waist. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay," I responded in a quiet voice.

The teacher finally regained his voice. "Oh, my God . . . um . . . Mr. Cullen . . . I-I'm going to n-need you . . . b-both of you . . . _all _of you to come with me." When none of the Cullens moved to follow, he turned around and yelled, "_Now!_" He backed away, staring at the damage, wide-eyed.

A moment later, I was alone.

…

"_How _did you not see that he would do that, Alice?" Carlisle Cullen snapped.

I was watching the scene unravel from six yards away. The Cullens, now including Carlisle and Esme Cullen, were all gathered outside of Principal Green's office, minus Emmett, who was inside with the principal himself. There was a huge group of students gathered around, watching them, but none of them seemed to care. I wanted to go to Edward because I had so many questions for him, but I stayed where I was. I wasn't with the large group of kids, though – I was separate from them, standing closer. I could hear their conversation very easily; they weren't trying to be discreet, although the group standing a ways behind me probably couldn't make out their words.

"What do you mean, _how_?" Alice countered her father. "I'm not perfect, Carlisle! He made the decision within a fraction of a second. I don't see everything! And even if I had, what could I have done? I was ten feet away! If anyone could have stopped him, it was Edward!"

Edward, who was sitting next to Jasper in the seats that occupied half of the hallway outside Mr. Green's office, shot up. "_Me!_" he yelled. "You wanted _me _to stop him? How was I supposed to do that? I was infuriated! You heard the ridiculous things he was suggesting! All of his proposals would put Bella in danger! I wasn't thinking, let alone listening to – to his – to his reasoning!" He stuttered, as if his last sentence hadn't been what he'd originally been planning to say. "You're the one who should have seen it, Alice! You should have been prepared for that!"

"I was a little busy shielding your _reason for existing _from harm, Edward!" his sister responded angrily. "You and Emmett were about to rip each other apart! Did you want her to see that? Were you even thinking of what would happen to her if you lost control of yourself, Edward? Your protective instincts would take over, and who knows what you'd do to her!"

Edward stared down at her, panting heavily, and said nothing.

"Carlisle," Esme said, tugging at her husband's arm, "we have an audience. Perhaps this conversation should wait until we arrive home. Obviously, there won't be any classes for a while." Classes had been dismissed until the cafeteria could be prepared – it wasn't safe for students to be in the cafeteria while an entire wall was out, and they had nowhere else for the kids to eat lunch. The classrooms, our principal had said, were for education only.

Carlisle Cullen turned, as if he had just noticed the teenagers watching his family curiously, nervously, and he sighed. "Okay," he announced to his family. "That's enough arguing. We'll speak at home. Everyone, wait in the car . . . _erm_, cars, and wait for Emmett. Let's go."

"Edward," Esme said, "I believe you owe a certain girl an explanation."

His eyes snapped over to me, and the anger that had been in them melted away. "Bella," he called, and motioned to me with one finger to come over to him. "Come here, sweetie." As usual, his term of endearment shot a thrill of happiness through me. I slowly felt myself begin to step forward, and Edward was getting closer to me. When I was within reach, he reached his hands out to grasp mine and pull me to his chest. "Are you sure you weren't hurt, Bella?"

"I'm sure," I echoed.

Edward sighed, and I felt his cool breath against my ear. "I'm sorry I allowed myself to get too caught up in my . . . disagreement with my brother. I shouldn't have let myself get so distracted with what he was . . ." He stopped, pursing his lips. ". . . suggesting."

"_How_, Edward?" I demanded in a whisper. "Edward, how did Emmett do that? What happened?"

Edward lifted his face from where he had tucked it in my neck, but his arms stayed wrapped around my waist tightly. "What do you mean, Bella?"

"I mean . . . what . . . what he did," I began, "wasn't _human_."

"That glass is over a hundred years old, Bella," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the entire world. "It hasn't been replaced since the town was built in . . . hmm, I believe it was 1902. Why do you think the teachers forbid anyone to lean against them? They're all so fragile. I'm sure even speaking to loudly while standing too close to one would send it crumbling."

"But . . . but _Emmett_," I insisted, twisting my hands in the front of his tightly-knit green and gray sweater. "He . . . h-he k-kicked it! He k-kicked that chair . . . and it flew . . . it went so far, Edward! How? It lifted off the ground, Edward!"

Edward looked down at me, a puzzled look crossing his face. "What do you mean, Bella? The chair didn't leave the ground. And, on another note, the school was built on not-flat ground. There's a little hill behind where Emmett's chair had been. The chair simply slid down the little peak and picked up velocity, and then it made contact with the frail glass wall . . . and the rest is history." He flashed a smile, leaning down to peck my cheek.

It didn't make sense. Well, maybe it did, but I knew what I had seen. I didn't believe Edward's explanation.

Suddenly, the door to the principal's office opened and Emmett trudged out. I turned to see him, just as the rest of the Cullen clan did. His expression was glum.

"I've got detention," he muttered.

"Serves you right," Rose snapped. She was looking everywhere but at her boyfriend.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" he exclaimed at her. "I wasn't thinking that it would –"

"Stop right there," Rosalie interrupted, her eyes wide and fuming. "That's enough of an explanation. You weren't _thinking_. Well, way to go, Emmett. Now we'll all have to leave another home, another life." With that, she turned on her heal and stomped off towards the corner of the parking lot that the Cullens always claimed for their own vehicles, mumbling a soft "I'll be in my car, Carlisle" as she passed her father.

The Cullens all watched her go, sadly, and Emmett shuffled his feet, staring at the ground. "Can we just go?" he demanded.

"Yes, I think it's time we went home," Esme decided. "Let's go. Everyone in the cars. And yes, Jasper, in the car that you _arrived _at school in."

"I drove Bella to school today," Edward stated.

Esme turned, smiling at me. "Okay. Drop Bella off, and come _straight_ home," she stressed. "We have much to discuss as a family."

The ride home was quiet. It was as if neither one of us new how to punctuate the unexpectedly early end of the day. When we pulled into my driveway, Edward turned back to me, pressing his lips against my forehead and then a quick peck against my lips. It was as easy-going and worriless as our first kiss. "I'll call you later, okay?" We'd swapped numbers last night while watching a television show.

I nodded, agreeing, but also still calculating and processing Edward's story in my head. "Okay. I'll talk to you then."

* * *

**Author's Note: Emmett! What's wrong with you? He's so clueless. **

**How many of you are mad at me for making Edward a non-virgin? To me, the whole thing where Edward's a 109-year-old virgin was kind of . . . out there. So I fixed it so that I liked it. I **_**promise**_** you that Edward and Tanya's history will NOT cause drama with the relationship between Edward and Bella. We know Edward refused Tanya, but was there really nothing there on his part? No attraction at all, nothing before Bella? I have no doubt that Bella is the first to touch his heart, but . . . I've always been curious as to what they would have been like together . . . ew, but don't worry. This is an Edward/Bella story. There will be no affair, there will be no kissing of the E/T kind, and there will be no dra – okay, wait. There might be drama, but not THAT kind of drama. Not E/T awkward-ex-drama. I WILL promise you that, at the very least. **

**Just in case anyone checks my facts about Forks, Washington's founding year, I'll clear this up. Yes, I'm aware that it was founded in 1945. Just to put that out there; I'm aware – it's not a mistake.**

**Thank you for reading! Let me know what you thought in a review. See you next chapter. **


	12. Chapter Twelve

**I received a review for Chapter Eleven from a person who said he or she will not be continuing to read my story because of Edward not being a virgin, and because of my attitude in my note at the bottom of the chapter. If, by some slim chance, the person who wrote that review is reading this (because the person did not leave a name for me to contact), I would just like to say that I'm sorry to lose you as a reader, but I have to stand by the plot that I want. I did not mean my author's note to be snooty or rude or however you took it, and I'm sorry if I offended you or angered you. But this is my plot. ****Stephenie Meyer said on her website that the important part of writing a book is telling the story to yourself, not thinking about pleasing the audience. I cannot please every single one of my readers, but I can please myself and make myself proud of my own work. ****Thank you for reading thus far. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this chapter. **

**Bella's Point of View**

**Chapter Twelve of Twenty-Nine**

I stared at my laptop screen, shocked, but at the same time, I really wasn't. My curiosity had gotten the best of me; it wasn't that I hadn't trusted Edward's explanation. It was all just so shocking and hard for my mind to process – I had to learn more and check into things.

Something in my gut had told me that the incident that Edward was passing off as unimportant had something to do with the secret he had been hesitating to tell me – according to him at the hospital.

My gut had been right – Edward's story had flaws; it had errors.

The first error: Forks, Washington was founded in 1945, not 1902. That would make the glass sixty-eight years old.

Thus, the second error: Glass doesn't grow fragile enough to shatter as easily as Edward pronounced it to in sixty-eight years. That would take hundreds and hundreds of years.

The third error: Charlie told me that the school had replaced that glass every five years for the past thirty when I had spoken to him about one of the walls in the cafeteria breaking yesterday.

These slip-ups made me sketchy of Edward's story, although I didn't know why I still had a lot of trust in Edward, and in our almost-relationship. Something inside me knew that I could trust him, that he had told me the things he had for a reason, and that that reason was to protect me. It was another one of my gut feelings. I wasn't going to call him out on his lie. I couldn't risk him growing mad at me and deciding that he didn't want anything to do with me. That thought brought a sharp pain in my chest, and so I dismissed them before they could plant a seed in my brain.

Edward and I had something special. I couldn't jeopardize that.

"Bells, the pizza's here!" Charlie called up to me from downstairs.

"Coming!" I shouted back, closing my laptop screen and pushing my swivel chair away from my desk.

…

The night after my revelation, I couldn't sleep. My mind was crawling with ideas of what Edward's fibs had meant. I knew I could trust him . . . but I still wanted to know why he had lied. I tossed and turned for half of the night before I gave in and leaped out of bed. My laptop was open the next second, and I squinted against the bright light that the screen shined into my eyes. I logged into my account, quickly brought up the Google homepage, and stared. What should I type? What was I looking for? What was I _doing_?

My fingers answered those wonderings for me. I watched myself type three words: _strength, awareness, pale. _

_ Strength_ because of Emmett's display two days earlier. _Awareness_ because of the quick, alert, and all-knowing personalities that the Cullens all had. _Pale _because they were all so pastel-colored and beautiful.

I moved the mouse to click _search_, but I never got to press the button.

My cell phone rang suddenly, a soft vibration coming from the nightstand by my bed.

Confused as to who would call me at – I glanced at the clock – two o'clock in the morning, I got up to check my caller ID.

Alice Cullen.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Bella," she said lightly, obviously wide awake. "Whacha doing?" She spoke as if all of her most meaningful conversations were held this early in the morning.

"Sleeping," I mumbled.

"Really?" she asked. "You sound pretty alert to me."

Worry shot through me. Could she tell I was lying? "Well, my phone woke me up. I wasn't exactly expecting a call."

"Well, I can't sleep, so I figured I'd call you, see what's up."

"You didn't think that I would be . . . oh, I don't know . . . unconscious?" I stood, making my way over to my bed as a sudden wave of exhaustion hit me. I stumbled over a shoe as I went, catching myself on my forearms on my bedspread. I turned my lamp off.

"The thought never crossed me."

"Mmm," I hummed. "Whatever. Look, I'm going to go. I'm tired, and I'm going to go back to sleep." I pulled the sheets up over my legs and laid my head down on my pillow, closing my eyes, listening to Alice sigh.

"I suppose that's for the best," she allowed. "I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, and Bella? I'm working on my research paper for history class. I just wanted to let you know that I've been looking some of the websites that Google offered me, and they haven't been reliable. Just a warning, so you don't receive false information and lose points. See ya tomorrow, Bella." She hung up before I could get a word in.

I sat down on my bed for a few minutes, just lying there, contemplating. I was stunned. Why had Alice brought up Google? They had been unreliable sources? It was as if she had known that I was about to search something. But she couldn't. She couldn't know, right? That wasn't possible. That couldn't be it. There had to be another explanation, I told myself.

Or maybe . . . just maybe . . . I had another adjective to add to my list.

I sat up and turned around to adjust my pillow. My fingers came in contact with a straw-like substance and I gasped, flicking my lamp on once again. More of my dark brown hair was lying on my pillow, just as much as it had been the first this time. My heart rate picked up, anxiety kicked in. I sighed. I would have to tell Carlisle about this now – this was the second time.

…

"Okay, Bella," Carlisle Cullen said, but I wasn't listening. I was too focused on the giant needle in his hand to listen to what he was saying. "This isn't going to hurt."

"That's what all doctors say right before it hurts," I muttered, my eyes never leaving the silver splinter of a needle being held between his fingers.

Doctor Cullen laughed. "Okay, you caught me. It'll hurt as much as your last flu shot hurt."

I shuddered. "Okay."

He chuckled again, but then turned serious. "This treatment will help you, Bella. It's a watered-down chemotherapy. It won't make you lose your hair, but it's gonna work with the radiation very well. It's going to work with the cancer cells floating in your blood, and it'll keep your strength up."

I looked up and met his gaze. "Okay," I repeated. _Tell him now_, I thought. _Tell him about the clusters on your pillow_.

"It _will_ work, Bella," he insisted, preparing my arm for the needle by wiping it with a cotton ball with cleaning alcohol on it. I shifted my weight, hearing the crackling of the sanitary paper beneath my butt. He continued, "I truly believe that it will work."

"I trust you," I responded. "My dad trusts you, too."

We both glanced at the door, knowing that my father was impatiently waiting on the other side of it. He'd have preferred to be in the room while I was being given my medication, but I'd talked him out of it. He didn't need to see it; he was stressed out enough as it was.

"Thank you, Bella," Carlisle said softly. "Are you ready?"

I sighed, nodding. A moment later, I felt the needle. Just a little pinch, but it was enough to make me wince in pain. I felt a thickness flood through my veins, similar to the feeling that one gets after receiving a tetanus shot or a rabies shot.

"Lie back for a while and let the medication spread through your blood stream," my doctor instructed, helping me sit back and get into a comfortable position. He grinned at me. "I'll send your father in, okay? And I do believe that my son is waiting to be allowed in your presence as well . . ." he trailed off, leaning around to peek out the blinds of the small, square-shaped window in the middle of the door.

"Tell him that he can come in after my dad sees that I'm not dead yet," I said without thinking.

Carlisle stopped, spinning rapidly on his heel. "_Yet_? You're expecting to die soon?"

I looked at him, startled. "No, no, that's not what I meant. But I mean . . . I'm eventually going to die. But I think . . . I think he expects me to die sooner than . . . than I should."

"He?" Carlisle repeated. "He as in Edward, or he as in your father?"

"My father," I answered. "I think he's already given up hope."

"You've only had one dose of the radiation and one injection of this chemotherapy, Bella," Carlisle began, "so I can't give you splendid news of an incredible improvement yet. But we'll get there, I promise you. I'll speak to your father. Perhaps he'd like to have a session with Carol the Wonder-Therapist?"

I laughed. "Yes, maybe that would be good for him. I think he needs to talk about what's happening in his mind. He won't talk to me about my treatments, or his opinion on my care, or anything that has to do with my leukemia."

"It's normal for patients and or close family members to have difficulty accepting the news of the cancer," he told me, "especially a blood cancer. The cancer cells are understandably in your blood, which travels through every organ and every vessel in your body, and so it allows the cancer many opportunities to take root in an important mass of tissue and permit it to spread."

"It's scary," I whispered, and a tight knot in my chest made itself noticeable. I wasn't worried about dying – I'd thought about it enough in my lifetime since my mother's passing. I wasn't scared to die. I was worried more for Charlie's sake.

Ever since he became a single parent when I was seven, I had been all the family he had. Neither pair of my grandparents were around – my mom's dad had died in combat while fighting in the United States' army, and her mother had abandoned my mom when she'd gotten pregnant with me because my grandmother had always hated Charlie, or so I've been told. My dad's parents lived in Canada, and Charlie didn't speak to them if it wasn't Christmas, Easter, or one of our birthdays while the birthday-person thanked them for the card they always sent with twenty dollars in it. My mom had been an only child and my dad's only brother passed away after three days of life, so I had no uncles, aunts, or cousins. It really was just Charlie and I for the amount of my life that I could remember. If I left him, he'd be all alone. It's not like he'd shown any interest in pursuing a relationship with a woman anytime soon.

Doctor Cullen sensed my distress and nodded. "I understand. You have a very good reason to be afraid. And Bella, you know that if you want to talk, Carol is still available for you to talk to. Just because you're stay here at the hospital is over doesn't make your status as her client over as well. All you have to do is let me know that you want an appointment with her, and I'll gladly make it for you. You could tell Edward, and he'll relay the message, if you so wished."

"Thank you," I breathed. "I appreciate that. That's really comforting. And I hope that Charlie will eventually agree to speak with her as well."

"Me as well, Bella," he said properly. "Me as well. I'll send your father in."

"Oh, wait a second," I breathed. I had to tell him I was losing my hair now.

He turned. "Yes, Bella?"

"Twice now, I've woken up . . . and clumps of my hair have been on my pillow."

He frowned, moving to glance at the back of my head. He squinted for a moment before pulling back. He didn't look concerned. "It shouldn't happen a lot more, Bella. It's normal, though. The radiation might have caused it, but I don't think it will get much worse. It's not noticeable, believe me. I know radiation isn't supposed to affect your hair, but there are always exceptions for that."

He wasn't worried. What a relief.

…

"So, I've been thinking that maybe we should take a vacation," Charlie said out of the blue the next night at the dinner table. "I mean . . . we should . . . go somewhere that you've always wanted to go, somewhere that we've never gotten to visit."

I looked up from my fish, a forkful of food pausing halfway to my mouth. "Why?"

"What?"

"Why now?" I demanded. "Why all of a sudden? Dad, we haven't gone on vacation in years. Why would we start now?"

"Well, I mean, I know Forks hasn't been the sunniest place compared to Phoenix, and last summer you spent so much time outside and you don't do that anymore, and –"

"That's because it's always cloudy and crappy out there," I responded sharply. "Look, Dad, this transfer was the best thing for us. You're making more money, which is surprising for it being such a small town, and I'm gonna graduate high school here, and . . . wait, are you thinking of taking another job in another city already? We've only been here, what, maybe two and a half months? Or are you trying to ask me if I miss Phoenix?

He looked away from me, upset with my outburst. "I know you didn't have many friends there after the . . . after . . . _everything _ended, but . . . I mean, do you, Bella? Do you miss it? Do you wish I hadn't taken this job, moved us here?"

"I'm glad we moved here, Dad!" I insisted. "If we hadn't moved here, I would have never met Edward and Alice and their family! And if you remember correctly, we made this choice together. We went _looking _for you a job around here."

"I just think that maybe I should have kept you in your original high school."

"Dad, being away from those memories is _good_ for me," I pressed. "Don't you see? Not having that constant image of Mom in the kitchen and all over the house is refreshing. It's a clean slate here, Dad. It's perfect."

He glanced up at me from his dinner. "Are you sure, Bella? You don't want move back?"

"No," I said definitely. "No, I want to stay here. I think it's good for me here. And Carlisle will take care of me; he knows what he's doing. He'll help me get better."

"What if you don't?"

"Don't what? Don't get better?"

"Yeah."

"Dad," I gasped, "you can't think like that! You have to think positive! I'm gonna be okay, Dad."

"What if you're _not_?"

"I will be!" I yelled, slamming my fork down on the table and standing up abruptly. "You have to trust that!"

"I don't trust _anyone _right now, Bella!" he screamed back. "My whole _world _is _screwed up_! Everything is _falling apart_! _Just like when I lost Renee_!"

I stopped, gasping for breath. We'd been screaming at each other for about three minutes. I spoke quietly, "Well, Dad. I didn't ask for this. And if you think you're the only one that's screwed up, I think I've got it way worse than you do. If you can't –" I choked. "If you can't be supportive and helpful and positive during this process of treating the leukemia, then I'll move out of her and move in with someone who will be."

"And who would that _someone _be?"

"Edward." Then, I jumped back, stunned at myself. What could have possibly made me say that?

Charlie frowned at me, his eyebrows pulling together. He obviously doubted the fact that I could move in with the Cullen family. And of course, he was right to. Why was I just inviting myself into their home?

I shook my head, pushing the thought away.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**I didn't realize there was no Edward in this chapter until I reread on the Doc Manager. I'm sad to say he plays a very small part in the next chapter, but Chapter Fourteen is chocked-full of Edward/Bella time. Push through with me, guys. **

**Okay. So, Charlie's hit rock bottom. How long before this sinks into Bella's brain that she's very sick? And what about Alice? What did you think about her calling Bella in the middle of the night? Let me know what went through your mind!**

**Thanks for reading. See you next chapter. **


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended with the posting of this story.**

**B****ella's Point of View**

**Chapter Thirteen of Twenty-Nine**

Three days had passed since Alice's unusual early-morning phone call. She'd acted all week in history as if nothing were wrong. She didn't show any sign of knowing about my curiosity as to what Edward and Carlisle and whoever else in the Cullen family were hiding from the rest of the world. My mind kept flashing back to their words that night in the hospital.

I heard Carlisle's voice in my head as I remembered their words, as if I was listening to him speak at that very moment. _"What is your calling, then, son? You've been doing the same thing for years, now. High school, college, three year break. Different high school, different college, longer break. Eventually, you'll have to get yourself a career." _

And Edward had responded, _"Bella is. Bella is my calling." _

It wasn't Edward's response that confused me. It was what his father had said to him. High school, college, three year break? How was that possible if he was only a high school senior? Was there some kind of inside joke or allegorical reference that Carlisle had been tying into his words that I just wasn't in the loop enough to understand? I couldn't wrap my mind around it, and I couldn't let it go. I had to get answers, but every time I made a choice to try and find some information out by asking some of the locals or searching the Internet, somehow Alice was always there with a good excuse for me not to. It was the same thing over and over again, and I as getting sick of it.

I wanted answers, and I was getting restless.

"Bella?"

I sat up straighter, looking up from the textbook on my desk to meet the eyes of Mr. Baker. "Yes, sir?"

"I suggest you focus your mind on Geometry, Bella," he said gently. "You obviously aren't going to be held responsible for the work we did for the part of the year that you weren't with us, but these past two weeks you were my student, and therefore you are required to make up all work that you missed. You pushed your way through your homework from last week, but you really need to pay attention now. This will all be on the test next week."

"I understand, sir," I answered, clicking my pen open and closed twice. "I'm listening, I promise."

Mr. Baker nodded. "Good. That's what I like to hear."

The rest of Geometry class passed far too slowly for my liking. I tried my hardest to think only about what Mr. Baker was writing on the board, but my mind was stuck on Edward.

I jumped when the bell rang and blushed from the snickers and giggles of the students around me. I quickly gathered my books, having decided that I would confront Alice – that was the only possible way for me to get answers without having to worry about offending Edward.

I swung my bag over my left shoulder and picked up the books that I was carrying separately. I stepped out of the hall, turning to walk with all my dignity showing into that history class and letting Alice know that I needed answers and intended to get them.

I didn't make it far before I heard someone calling my name. "Bella! Bella, wait up!"

I turned to see Melissa Grant rushing through the crowd of teenagers to get to me. She grinned widely as she skidded to a stop to my left. "Where have you been? It's been, like, two weeks since your first day, and I haven't seen you in English class since then. What's been going on? You know, only the seniors get to skip whole weeks without suffering the consequences." She laughed. "The rest of us still have a ways to go before we're that close to graduation."

I shrugged. "I've been . . . held up."

"Too held up for school?"

"I was –" I swallowed. "I was in the hospital."

Melissa's mouth formed an O, and her feet stopped completely for a second before she was knocked roughly aside by a group of girls rushing past. She huffed, and we resumed our walk. "What happened, Bella?"

"I . . . I have leukemia," I whispered. I mean, kids would find out anyway, right? It was a small town; secrets were out of the question. Next to me, a girl turned her head and gasped when she heard what I had just admitted, and I knew that my secret wouldn't be a secret of much longer. "I found out when I went in for – for yearly blood work." Hey, I deserved some choice in what people knew. I wouldn't tell anyone about my slight hair-loss. That was, hopefully, in the past.

She shook her head. "That must be terrifying. I don't know what I'd do if I found out that I – wait, what's the . . . um, what's the survival rate? And the – um – life expectancy?"

"I didn't want to ask," I murmured. "I don't want to know that – not yet. Not until we know how the results of my chemo and . . . and this pill Doctor Cullen put me on is working or not."

"You've already started treatments?" Melissa asked. "That's good. Did you catch it early?"

"Yeah," I said. "At least, that's what Doctor Cullen told me."

"Well, Doctor Cullen is a really good doctor," she stated. "I mean, he doesn't really specialize on cancer, but then, this is Forks, Washington, home of about three thousand people. We don't have a special cancer doctor, so Doctor Cullen usually just the doctor they turn to when it's, ya know, like, serious and –" She stopped. "Of course, you probably have already figured that out."

I nodded. "Yeah. He's . . . he's been really great and understanding. He even came up with a formula of the chemo that won't make me lose my hair. I'll have to change to a stronger type, of course, if this doesn't work, but at least he's trying to help me without . . . taking my hair away."

She nodded, too. "That's . . . wow, that's great." She glanced around, puckering her lips. "I gotta go to class. But listen, you know where I sit at lunch, right? With Jess and Mike and Angela Weber and Eric Yorkie?"

I looked over to her, perplexed. "Yeah."

"Come sit with us if you ever decide that you don't want to sit with the Cullens anymore, okay?" She grinned at me. "Um, hey, I've been meaning to ask you something. I-I mean, I know we're not that close of friends and all, but my birthday is next week, and Jessica and everyone are going down to La Push beach to celebrate. I was just wondering . . . maybe, if you're feeling up to it, if you'd want to come with us."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I need to be social." I thought about Edward, about how he'd miss me, because I knew he wouldn't go, but then I knew he'd understand. And it wasn't like we were _official _yet. Alice might think we're a thing, but as I'd concluded earlier – he hadn't said the words yet.

"Great!" she exclaimed. "I'll text you the details. Give me your cell phone number."

And I did.

…

Later that evening, while I was preparing dinner for Charlie and me, I heard a swift knock at our front door. I turned to the front window, surprised because I hadn't heard a car pull into our driveway. Peeking out around the curtains, I saw Alice Cullen's yellow Porsche resting behind my big, red, clunky truck. I frowned, wondering what she was here for, but gladdened again when I thought of having company while I cooked.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel, turned down the burner of the soup I was making, and turned to waltz over to the door. I unlocked it, opened the door, and was met with Alice's bright, happy smile.

She flicked her neck, moving a piece of her short, spiky hair away from her eyes. "Hi, Bella."

"Hey," I greeted her. "What's up? I wasn't expecting to see you." I turned, making my way back to the kitchen to check on my dinner. I motioned to her to follow.

Alice's voice was grim. "I have to tell you something, Bella." I heard her close the door once again with a small click.

I spun around, shocked at the sudden seriousness in her voice. Just two seconds ago, literally, she'd smiled at me and had a perky, happy voice. Her face was now blank and stern. _Bipolar_, I thought, and then dismissed it. I would have noticed that before now. "Whoa," I gasped. "Um, okay. What's wrong?"

"You're suspicious."

"What?" A panic shot through me. So she did know that I'd grown curious about her family, what they were hiding. Would she be angry at me for being nosy? Would she hate me? Would Edward?

"I mean, it's only natural," she continued, her hands fluttering about in front of her. She plopped down on a chair at my kitchen table. "You're human. We're different. Your instincts know that. You can sense it. Edward's being ridiculous, and Carlisle? Ugh, he's making me so upset. He's _feeding _Edward all these facts about your _nervous _system and your _brain _and all this _doctor _crap that I don't care to think about, and it makes me sick!"

She moaned. "You and Edward could be so _happy _together!" She paused. "Not that you aren't already happy, because I know you are, but it would be so much better if you knew. You'd be more trusting. You have a hard time trusting him, don't you? I understand, Bella, I completely understand. It's gotta be frustrating. I keep trying to tell Edward that if he just spills his guts, everything will be better, and you know what's crazy? Rosalie agrees with me! That – well, that's a different story, but that's insane! And anyway, I keep trying to tell Edward this, I really do, and he just . . . ugh, you know? I swear I'm arguing your side, Bella. I promise you I am. I've been trying to be as convincing as I can be, but this is _Edward_ we're talking about. He's Mr. Stubborn as All Get-Out." She stopped, sucked in a breath, and continued.

At this point, I tried to inject my own comments, because I was so entirely confused, but she pressed on as I took a breath.

"_And another thing_," she yelled, "I've always been there for Edward, but he's being such a jerk to me! I've always taken his side with _everything_! Once I even took his side during a disagreement he was having with Jasper! I've been the best sister I can be to him, and how does he repay me?" She scoffed and lowered her voice to attempt to mimic Edward's. "_Alice, Bella doesn't need to know everything yet. She's only sixteen. She's got a lot on her mind lately, and I can't make that worse._ That's not Edward talking! Those're Carlisle's words!"

She wasn't making sense. I said so, but she ignored me as if I hadn't said anything.

She rolled her eyes. "And _Emmett_? Ugh! He's just . . . ugh. I can't even describe how useless and pigheaded he's being. He usually does everything Rose says and agrees with her every opinion, but Carlisle is so much more convincing than I am. Edward and Carlisle are letting this entire family fall apart! Rose can't even stand to be in the same room as her husband because he's on Edward's side, and she's on my side, and so she's been hunting for the past – I don't know, two days?"

_Rose? Husband? What?_ She and Emmett were really married? Did that mean that Alice and Jasper were married, too?

Finally, she turned to look at me. Before, her eyes had been locked on one of the kitchen cabinets. She'd been speaking so quickly and so intensely that I had thought she'd forgotten that I was in the room. But she looked to me and met my confused gaze.

"That's why I'm here, Bella – I just _had _to talk to someone, and Esme isn't taking sides because she doesn't want to make anyone angry, but I _know _she agrees with Carlisle and Edward. I mean, she always takes Carlisle's side, so it's not a mystery. Like, _no matter what _Carlisle says. He could say 'oh, let's slaughter the entire town!' and she'd be like 'okay, dear, whatever you say'!" She paused, frowning. "Okay, maybe not in _that _instance. But anyway, I hear her talking. I have visions of them, of things they'll say. Have they forgotten that I have that power? You know, I don't even try to control my emotions anymore around Jasper, and I definitely don't reign in my thoughts around Edward. He has to know my real opinion – no hiding anything, no secrets. He's so stubborn. I feel so bad that you're going to have to live with him your entire life."

"Alice," I yelled at the first opportunity to speak, "stop, okay? Just . . . calm down and let me . . . _process._ What are you saying? I mean, what are you even talking about? I don't understand . . . some things you've said, I don't . . . I'm lost."

"I know you are, Bella," she told me. She chucked to herself. "You know what's funny? They don't even know that I'm here. I've been avoiding Edward all day – if he knew I was here right now, he'd have a cow. I just think that you deserve to know, Bella – aren't you curious?"

I played dumb. "Curious?"

"About us," she cleared up. "About my family."

The playing dumb option went away. "Uh . . . well, yeah."

She nodded. "I knew it. I've been having visions of you, you know. You're . . . I haven't told them this, and maybe I should because it might help my case . . . but, Bella, you're getting close to figuring us out. You already know that we're different, right?"

I was completely convinced that I was having a dream. "You're . . . something."

"Yes," she agreed, "we are. We're something that's . . . different than you are."

"Yes," I agreed. "I know that."

"You're not stupid, Bella," Alice murmured, "and I don't know why they all think you are. Those aren't their exact words, of course, but they don't think that you could have the smarts to figure it out. I know you can. I've seen you doing it."

I turned back to my soup, which by now was boiling. I quickly turned off the burner and inserted my ladle into the bowl to stir it. "Alice," I said, watching my dinner, "you aren't making _any _sense. Are you okay? I mean . . . this is going to sound rude . . . but . . . I mean, are you . . . on something? Medication or something? That you forgot to take this morning?"

She laughed. "No, Bella. I promise you that I'm completely sane. I'm not normal, but I'm sane." I heard her scoot her chair closer to the table. "Tell me what you know, Bella," she ordered. "Tell me what you think you know, tell me what you know you know, tell me . . . anything you've figured out."

I glanced back at her. "Are you serious?"

"Deadly," she said, and then laughed as if it was her own personal joke.

"Okay," I began. "Okay, um . . . you all have the same color eyes, but you're not all related."

"Nice," she complimented me. "What else?"

"You're all . . . like . . . cold." I opened the oven a crack to check on the chicken that was baking, but I'd just put it in two minutes before Alice had arrived, so it had a while to cook yet.

"Also correct," she granted.

"Um . . . I've heard . . . conversations," I confessed. "Well, just one, between Edward and Carlisle when I was at the hospital. They thought I was sleeping, but I wasn't." I proceeded to tell her everything that I'd heard them say that had confused me.

"Those _imbeciles_," she mocked. "How could they not _know_ . . ." She shook her head. "What else?"

"Uh . . . well . . . you have . . . oh, Gosh, I don't know what they are, but . . ."

"Just say it in whatever way you can."

"Well, you guys keep saying about . . . having powers."

"Yes, it would seem that our conversations haven't been . . . secretive enough."

"I mean . . . Edward can . . ."

"Read minds," she finished.

"And Jasper can?" I now turned my attention to the rice that was in a pot on the opposite burner from the soup. It was done, so I turned the burner off and moved it to one that wasn't heated up.

"Manipulate emotions," Alice said.

"You?"

"I see the future."

I took a breath. My hands were shaking and my mind was spinning. I couldn't keep up. "And the others?" I set the stirring spoon down on the counter and wiped my hands over my forehead.

"It's only me, Jazz, and Edward that have abilities."

_Abilities. _That must be what they call them. "Oh. Why?"

Alice shrugged. "We don't know. What else, Bella? You've avoided the biggest, most obvious thing. I know it's coming up. It's what set off the visions."

I ignored the whole _visions _thing because hey, I'm human, and humans fear the unknown. I pretended that everything was normal, that I understood everything she was saying, and that I believed every word. "Um . . ." I thought hard. "Well, the whole thing with Emmett was the day that you called me and –" I gasped.

Alice looked up from picking at her perfectly polished nails with an excited smile. "Yes, Bella – keep going. Keep thinking about it. I know you don't believe a word I'm saying, and really, why would you? But if you think about it, Bella – if you think _really _hard – it'll make sense, I promise you."

"You called me . . . and you said . . . that Google is inaccurate," I recalled.

She rolled her eyes, flipping a piece of her bangs away from her eye. "I hated saying that – I hated turning you away from finding the truth – and you would have, Bella. You would know the truth if Edward hadn't been there to read my mind and tell me to call you and throw you off course."

I suddenly realized that through her entire monologue she'd skirted around actually telling me _what _she was – who she was. She was using phrases like _the truth, what we are, figuring us out, _and_ our secret. _I also had picked up on some special words that seemed to be the key to finding out _the truth_ – and Alice seemed to be dropping them in our conversation because she _wants _me to find out the truth.

I widened my eyes. "Did you . . . did you _know _that I was going to Google stuff about your family? Though one of your . . . uh . . . visions?"

"Absolutely," she confirmed. "You had just figured out that Edward's story was bogus and his facts weren't right. You were going to type in three words. Strength, awareness, and pale."

_Strength because of Emmett's display two days earlier. Awareness because of the quick, alert, and all-knowing personalities that the Cullens all had. Pale because they were all so pastel-colored and beautiful._

I blinked. "How did you . . ." I certainly believed her story now.

Unexpectedly, Alice's face went blank and she focused solely on a single spot on the floor. Her lips parted a little, her eyes seeming to glass over as she watched. They shot back and forth as if she were reading a book or watching a movie. And then just as suddenly, she blinked and was back to normal. "Okay," she said, nodding to herself. "I guess I'm not going to be able to work you through this so that you figure it out on your own like I'd wanted to. I wanted you to have the realization on your own, but Jasper figured out that my scent hadn't gone entirely into the woods, and that I'd come into town instead of hunting."

"Hunting?" I echoed warily.

"I'll explain that later," she rushed out. "Edward's on his way. We have two minutes and seventeen seconds as of right _now_."

"Did you just have . . . a . . . a vision, or whatever?"

"That's right, Bella," she told me.

I shook my head. "This is insane. I mean . . . how? That's not human . . . it's not human to be able to see the future, or read minds, or manipulate emotions! It's not human to be as strong as Emmett apparently is! It's _not human _to be as cold and pale as you all are and have eyes that change color by the minute like yours do! It's not _human_, Alice!"

"We're not human, Bella," she confirmed. She glanced out the window, and panic crossed her face. "We're not human," she repeated nonetheless.

"Then _what are you, _Alice?" I screamed. Everything about this conversation had caught up to me and I was losing my mind.

"We're vampires, Bella," Alice told me.

Edward was suddenly standing behind her then, glaring at her, his hair windblown and his eyes black. I only saw him for a second, long enough to watch him wrap his hands around Alice's skinny neck, and then the world was black. I felt myself hit my head on something hard, and then everything was just gone.

The world was silent, and it was peaceful.

Until I heard Edward's tortured cry and felt his cold hands on my cheeks.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**She KNOWS! And Edward wasn't the one to tell her! Crap is about to hit the fan, I'd say. **

**I haven't done my favorite quote for the last couple chapters because there really wasn't anything in the chapters that I really . . . well, favored. But here's one for this chapter: **

I glanced back at her. "Are you serious?"

"Deadly," she said, and then laughed as if it was her own personal joke.

**Thank you all for reading! Every chapter, I'm getting less and less readers, so I treasure every single reader and every single review. See you all next chapter!**


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**I would like to wish a special Happy Birthday to Carolhc! I was going to grant her birthday wish by giving her this chapter early, but unfortunately it was deemed to long to send via PMs or Docx. Instead, I will dedicate this chapter to her. Happy Birthday! **

**Brace yourselves. This is intense. **

**Bella's Point of View**

"It should have been _my _decision,Alice!" Edward screamed in his sister's face. "What _right_ did you have? She wasn't _ready_!"

"_She _wasn't ready?" Alice yelled back. "I don't think so! I think it was _you _who wasn't ready, Edward, and that's not right! She deserves to know this! It's going to affect her entire life! Her entire existence depends on this secret, Edward!"

They'd been arguing for hours. After I'd woken up from my fainting spell to see both Edward and Alice hovering over me. They were already fighting, although it had been in whispers. After I had woken and finished dinner for Charlie in a daze, I wrote him a note that it was in the fridge waiting and not to wait up – I was going out to see a late movie with friends. I'd had my first personal experience with vampirism then.

They can run. They can run _fast_. I would have preferred to drive to the Cullens' house in Alice's Porsche, but Edward was fidgeting and growling and he wouldn't let me out of his arms, and something told me that letting him carry me like he was suggesting over and over again would calm him down. The entire run to his house, he had his nose buried in my hair with my arms wrapped around his neck. He carried me like I was his bride. And some day, I knew in my heart that I would be.

But at his moment, he was scaring me.

"She's going through so much right now!" Edward shot back at her. "She doesn't _need this_!"

I was sitting on the couch in the Cullens' living room with Esme's arm wrapped around my shoulders. She wasn't putting her two cents in the conversation, just watching. Actually, all of the Cullens had spread out around the edge of the room, speculating the argument. Jasper was watching Edward closely, as if he were preparing to take him down if he tried to hurt Alice in anyway. Emmett was crouched down low, but not in a fighting stance. It was like he was trying to avoid being hit with objects that might go flying. Rosalie was looking at Edward with disgust. Esme was playing Switzerland. Carlisle was most obviously on Edward's side, but wasn't speaking.

"Who are you to say what she _needs_?" Alice shouted, waving her hands around her head rapidly. They were a blur. "You have no idea what Bella needs or wants or _anything_!"

"_Excuse me_?" he screamed back at her. "Are you telling me that I don't know what _my own mate _needs? I know _exactly what Bella needs. I should rip you apart for even implying that!_"

"Well, if you do know, you haven't been showing it!"

"_I'll kill you, Alice, and don't think I won't_!"

Jasper was in between the two of them then, snarling in my mate's face.

_Mate. _Did I just use the word mate? Was their vampire-slang wearing off on me?

I felt Esme begin to rub up and down my arms soothingly. It was all too much for me to deal with – the news I'd recently learned, of course, was scandalous, and I was scared to death. Plus, Edward and Alice were screaming so loudly that I thought my ear drums were going to burst. And the expression of Edward's face was frightening me – his lips were pulled back over his teeth as he snarled at Alice over Jasper's shoulder, his eyes black with rage and his tense and fisted at his sides. His body was shaking so hard he was blurry. My heart was pounding so recklessly that I could hear it in my ears.

Rosalie then interjected her opinion at that point in time. "Listen to yourselves!" she screamed over them. "You're talking about Bella like she's not even in the room! You're scaring the crap out of her!" She gestured to me with one hand and pointed at Edward with the other. "_Bella _should be your first priority, Edward. Making her feel safe and loved should be your main goal. Explaining this all to her should be your main goal. Alice told her – she needed to know! Everyone knows that I'm on Alice's side and I have been ever since you met Bella and –" She stopped.

Edward's eyes swiveled to me, and I was desperately trying to control my sobbing. His face crumpled and he was in front of me in a second. I blinked, gasping and flinching back as I processed his movements that were so fast that I'd barely had time to blink. "Bella," he whispered, caressing his fingers over my face, "are you alright, love? I'm so sorry you had to find out this way, love, I really am."

"Edward," I cried, overwhelmed with all of the emotions that I was feeling.

Edward turned to Jasper, who was standing in the corner, looking uncomfortable. "Jazz, please, help her," he pleaded.

I then remembered Jasper's gift. I felt a wave of calm pass over me, followed by a wave of exhaustion. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck so that he could pick me up. "You need to rest, love. Let's go."

"No," I protested. "You're . . . upset."

"I'm not upset, love," he assured me. "Everything's fine."

"But . . . b-but . . ." I wanted to say that we needed to talk about this, about everything, but I couldn't form the words properly. It all came out as a mumbled gurgle.

"Shh, Bella," he said, and I felt myself being laid down on a large bed in a strange bedroom with a wall of CD cases. "Sleep. I'll be right here when you wake." I was once again shocked at how fast Edward could move, for this room had to be upstairs, but I didn't say anything. I was asleep.

…

I opened my eyes to see a room I'd never seen before in my life. It had plain white walls with the occasional picture frame or lamp. One wall was made up entirely of shelves holding CDs – gosh, there must have been hundreds of them. The shelves, too, were white. There was a closet next to a door that appeared to lead to a balcony. The door was closed so I couldn't see the clothes that were in it, if it was even a closet, but I didn't have to see the wardrobe options to know that I was in Edward's room.

The bed I was lying on was huge and tall and plushy. I rolled over onto my left side, for I had previously been on my right, and made eye contact with Edward immediately.

"Edward," I whispered.

He smiled down at me, setting a book aside on the nightstand next to the bed. "How are you feeling, sweetheart?" He leaned forward, resting his hands on the bed in front of him.

I shrugged and teased him casually. "I'm still tired, but my dream wasn't going anywhere, so I woke up."

He chuckled softly, running a hand through his tousled red-brown hair. "You can go back to sleep. Alice called Charlie and told him that you'd come back here with us to hang out for a while and you fell asleep. He asked her to relay the message to you that he'd enjoyed dinner and would see you this afternoon – he gets off work during his first shift slightly later than three o'clock, and but he's not returning for his second shift. Alice sees you two having dinner at the diner downtown tonight."

"_This _afternoon?" I repeated. "_Tonight_? What time is it? How long have I been sleeping?"

"It's two in the morning," he answered softly. Our fingers twined together gently. "You went to sleep at ten thirty, so you haven't been out _that _long, really."

"Wait," I advised, "how . . . but . . . what time did you . . ." I didn't want to remind Edward of his dispute with Alice in fear that he would grow upset again and restart the yelling.

"I arrived at your house at ten after eight," he told me. "Alice . . ." He snapped his teeth together audibly, his eyes flaring with anger momentarily before he controlled himself. "Alice had been there for about forty minutes. You were fainted for . . . ten minutes at the most, and then we arrived here at about eight thirty. You know the rest."

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

He nodded with me.

I glanced around the room. There was a pool of blue moonlight peeking in from an opening in the large curtains covering what I assumed were the windows which gave me a good view of what was surrounding me. Along with the large wall of CD cases and shelves, there was a dresser and a closet. The closet door was open and I could faintly make out the outline of a few of Edward's nice suit jackets and tuxedoes sticking out. The dresser was neatly set up with combs and other male hair products as far as I could tell, but the drawers were shut so I couldn't see any of the clothing in it. I assumed it was full of T-shirts and jeans, both of which I'd rarely seen him wear. The room was neat for belonging to a man – it surprised me, but at the same time it didn't. Edward was a neat, tidy person – er, could I call him that? A person?

It was after that thought that I realized that we needed to have a discussion about everything that had happened to us over the past hours. "Edward . . ."

"Ask any questions you like," he immediately told me, our hands tightening around each other. "I'm willing to answer any of them. Anything you ask, I'll give you the absolute truth and nothing but."

I rolled back over onto my back, watching the ceiling. I started easy. "Why are you still awake? I mean, it's late. Shouldn't you be sleeping?" I turn my head to the side to look at him, but stay on my back, my arms resting on my stomach. I felt my clothing under my palms and realize that I'm wearing a T-shirt – I assumed it was one of Edward's.

In the dark, he smirks. "That's easy. I don't sleep."

I sit up on my elbows. "Never?"

He shook his head. "No, not ever. It's a vampire thing – our bodies don't need to refuel after each day, so we just . . ." He shrugged. "We just don't sleep."

"Then why do you have a bed?" I asked.

He hesitated. "I bought it when . . . when I met you. I . . . well, I didn't _know _that you would because Alice hadn't seen anything yet, but I had _hoped _that you would be spending many nights here with me, many evenings, and I knew that you would need somewhere comfortable to sleep, and what kind of man would let his mate sleep on a hard couch? So I had the bed put in here."

"You thought I'd be spending the night a lot?" I asked, thinking of the alternate meanings of those words. Alice had mentioned that he'd slept with his ex-girlfriend . . . did that mean he would expect sex from me as well?

He nodded, but then seemed to make the connection to my question. His face froze. "Oh, no, Bella, that's not what I – I mean, of course I want to do that with you, but – of course we won't do anything like that until you're ready, and you're absolutely sure you're ready. I would never pressure you into having sex, Bella – please know that. This . . . this . . . relationship, if you will, is . . . it's different than normal relationships, yes, but . . . but it's the same in that way."

"What does it mean – for me to be a mate?" I inquired. "I mean, what does it mean to be the mate of a vampire?"

He smiled. "It means to be wanted above everyone else by that male," he said, and then he stopped the third-person. "It means that I will be . . . very protective of you. It's my _job _to protect you and make sure that you are cared for and that you feel loved. I will love you forever, Bella. I already love you, and I know that's a shocking thing for you to grasp, but I do – I love you."

He paused, waiting for me to speak, but continued when I said nothing. "I – I can't . . . I won't ever be able to leave you alone, Bella – and I'm sure that's frightening to you, but I physically can't . . . be away from you. My instincts tell me to never let you out of my sight, especially with your –" He suddenly went silent.

"With my leukemia," I finished for him.

He nodded stiffly. "Yes." He told me more about his life as a vampire, about his family's strictly-animal-blood diet and their constant moving around from state to state every couple years. He told me that when they move away from Forks, I'll have a choice – I could either choose to stay in Forks and live with my dad until I graduate or until Edward changes me, because he would change me at some point so that we could be together forever, we'd decided, or I could go with Edward and the Cullens and reenroll in high school with them, and become a part of their family as Rosalie and Jasper had. Either option would keep Edward and I together – if I chose to stay in Forks, Edward would simply stay with me and hide in the shadows of the town until dark, and live in my room with me, or in his car, or have an apartment in Port Angeles where he could keep his things.

We spoke about all of the important topics that I was curious about, and by the time our conversation as over, I had no doubt in my mind that the Cullens were vampires. I'd completely accepted it, as crazy as that would have seemed to me just one day before. But I loved Edward, and I always would, and so I guess I was willing to be okay with anything that came along with him.

"It's only two-thirty, love," he mentioned when my questions stopped. "Go ahead and sleep. I'm sure Alice and Esme will be waking you in the morning to show off their breakfast preparation skills." He paused, cocking his head to the side, and smiled. "Alice confirms it. Nine o'clock, she says. It'll be ready."

"I have one more question," I whispered as my eyelids grew heavier.

"Ask it," he allowed, grinning at me. He reached up to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes and leaned closer to hear what I was going to utter.

"Does this mean we're officially boyfriend and girlfriend now?" I said softly, feeling like a ten-year-old with the wording of that sentence.

Edward laughed gently. "Yes, Bella," he confirmed, "we are."

I smiled, and then I was asleep once again with Edward's hand still clasped around mine. I knew I would wake with our hands joined because he would never pull away from me.

…

Alice and Esme had made me breakfast, as promised, the next morning. It consisted of eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes, toast with jelly, and orange juice. They'd made enough to feed about five people and technically it was two different breakfast meals that they'd prepared, but I'd eaten a little of everything, and it was all good.

"We've always wanted to make a _meal_," Esme said when I thanked her for her hard work, "but the thanks should go to the Food Network. We were happy to do it, though, Bella."

"And you can expect it every time you spend the night here," Alice added. She was sitting on the stool next to me at the island table in the Cullens' kitchen – probably the first person to ever sit in that chair. I was positive I was the first person to eat there, and I was eating the first meal produced by a practically brand new kitchen. Alice frowned. "Well, only until you're changed, of course. We can't bring dead animals into the house. Far too much blood, right, Rosalie?"

Rosalie laughed and looked to me. "Alice won't stop teasing me about the time I brought a dead deer back to the house with me after hunting because I wanted to dine in a kitchen like a person. It didn't work – I got blood on the living room carpet and never made it to the kitchen. I drank it dry just inside the threshold." She ran a hand though her long golden curls, shaking her head. "It's so embarrassing. And you know what's crazy? She didn't even live with us when it happened. _Edward _told her all about it a few days after she and Jasper moved in."

I'd uncovered the truth about how the Cullens had come to be a mismatched family last night as well – Edward had been dying of the Spanish influenza when Carlisle changed him, Esme had almost killed herself but Carlisle couldn't let her die, Rosalie had been a victim of rape and was saved by Carlisle, Emmett was saved by Rosalie while being attacked by a bear as a human, and Alice and Jasper had been changed by two different vampires – one unknown and one by the name of Maria who thought that Jasper would make a fine addition to her newborn vampire army. They'd found the Cullens through one of Alice's visions.

Carlisle Cullen really was the glue of the family – he'd brought them all together and had continued to hold them close to each other for over ninety years.

I might have been classified as crazy, but I couldn't wait to become the next part of their story, the new edition to their family. I wanted to become a vampire, and I knew that one day, I would.

…

"Bella," I heard Edward say. I looked up from my homework. I was still trying to make up for the work that I'd missed during my stay in the hospital about a week and a half ago, and my deadline for turning it in was on Monday so that my teachers could check everything before Spring Break. It was now Saturday.

I put my pencil down on my desk. "Yeah?"

He smiled from his seat on my bed. "I've been thinking. We haven't been on a real . . . _date _yet, have we?"

"No, I guess we haven't." I liked where this conversation was going.

"Perhaps we should change that."

I grinned. "Perhaps we should."

…

"You're not into this at all, are you?" I asked Edward.

He happily took his eyes off of the large theater screen in front of us to look down at me. "What makes you say that? You're entirely correct, but still."

I laughed quietly. Resting on the armrest in between our chairs, our hands entwined. "You look like . . . your mind is completely on something else. What is it?"

"It's just been crazy these past few days," he murmured. "You know that. Esme's been redecorating and Rose has been crabby . . . and Alice has been having these weird visions about Jasper running aimlessly around the woods, and so she's been down my throat about his thoughts. But as far as I can tell, he has no desire to streak through the forest, so." He looked up at the screen. "I'm sorry. I'm here, on a date, with you, and we're talking, and we're bonding, and I shouldn't be thinking of my family's problems."

"That's right," I said, nodding.

Half an hour later, we were walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk. I was eating an ice cream cone and Edward was staring at it in disgust. "Is that appetizing?"

I laughed. "Yes, actually. It's _very _appetizing. Maybe not to a vampire" – I lowered her voice to whisper the last word" – but to humans, it's quite enjoyable."

"Well, for seven dollars and twenty-one cents, it had better be," he joked. Money was not a problem with the Cullen family.

I glanced sideways at him, amused. "Says the man whose father is the best surgeon that Forks, Washington has ever seen." I paused, feeling my eyebrows pulling together. "Okay, so maybe he's the _only _surgeon Forks has ever seen, but still! You guys have got _money_. It's ridiculous."

"It hasn't all been taken away from the good people of Forks," he said, sounding slightly defensive yet slightly teasing. "It's been accumulated over the three hundred or so years he's been alive."

"I'm jealous," I said. "You don't even have to get a job." I switched her ice cream cone to my left hand and reached for his hand with my right. "I mean, Charlie isn't demanding that I get a job. But that's the problem, you know? He's just offering me money here and there. 'Oh, hey, Bells, ya need lunch money'? 'No, Dad, I pack my lunch'. 'Oh, hey, Bells, you wanna go shopping'? 'No, Dad, I don't like shopping whatsoever'. Which, by the way, I think Alice has a problem with."

"Undoubtedly," he confirmed.

"So anyway," I sidetracked, "don't even think about trying to buy me expensive gifts or anything like that, because I don't like charity, and I don't like diamonds."

He raised an eyebrow. "Where did that come from?"

"I'm just putting it out there."

"Out where?"

"Out there," I said, pointing to his temple, and thus, his brain. "So. Just know. No presents unless it's my birthday or Christmas, and even then. Keep it at a low cost."

"Okay," he agreed, and then after a few beats, "but diamonds? No diamonds? Aren't diamonds girls' best friends?" Maybe giving me no presents would be more difficult for him than I imagined it would be.

I stopped walking and turned completely sideways to stare up at him, but I made sure my expression was humorous so he knew I was kidding. "If that was a song reference, then you've just become a _lot _cheesier than I thought you were. C'mon, Edward. I know you've been around for a long time, but –" I cut off, grinning devilishly.

He stared at me for a moment, his expression blank. When he opened his mouth again, the conversation took a sudden turn. "I-I . . . I can't . . . believe that you're . . . sick. You're so carefree and healthy-looking. You're walking and eating ice cream and smiling. And you look absolutely perfect, Bella. You're beautiful. And I just keep wondering '_how is it that there was a blood cancer growing inside her_'"

He paused, blinked, and shook his head, seemingly stunned at himself. "Oh," he whispered. "I didn't mean to . . ." He frowned, meeting my gaze. "I didn't mean to . . . say that."

I had to show him that it didn't bother me. I was sick, but I didn't _feel _sick. He'd noticed, naturally. It didn't bother me. I teased him, showing him that I wasn't offended. I continued on with the age joke I was going to make. "That's okay. Old men can't be expected to keep everything bottled up all the time."

"Hey, hey – there's no need to bring my age into this," he joked, catching on to my intentional lightheartedness.

We resumed walking again. "How old are you, anyway?"

"One-hundred-nine years old," he told me.

I widened my eyes drastically, dramatically, and ripped our hands apart. I threw it to my throat, gasping. But I was such a bad actor that he knew I was faking my shock the entire time. I said anyway, "You're _old_! Oh, my Gosh, you could be my _grandfather_! That's sick. We're sick." I smiled.

He grinned back. "What's your favorite color?"

"Brown," I said instantly, taking a lick of my ice cream. It was melting a little now. My swallow carried into the next sentence, making my voice a little husky. "It's a warm color. Most people don't understand that, but – I don't know. It's just . . . warm. I don't know how else to say it."

"It's a great color," he agreed with me. "It sure sparkles in your eyes."

I blinked three times fast on purpose. "You think? Okay, what's yours?"

"My favorite color?" I nodded and he said, "I don't have one."

"Oh, c'mon. A hundred years, and you don't have a favorite color?" I flicked my neck to the side to brush my hair out of my eyes.

"That's right."

"Okay," I said slowly, deciding to switch up my wording. "Then what color do you favor?"

"That's the same question!"

"It's not!" I laughed. "What color do you favor over all the colors of the world?"

"That would make that color my favorite, and I don't have one."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay. What is _a _color that you _like_?"

"Why are we hanging onto this question like this?" He wanted to change the subject, and I didn't understand why. It was a simple question, but whatever. I moved on.

"I don't know," I mused. "Okay – who's your favorite sibling?"

"Alice is going to have a vision of this exact moment, and she's going to be ticked if I say anyone but her." His cell phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket to glance at it. He shook his head and let me read it. _I had the vision two minutes ago_. It was, of course, from Alice.

I grinned. "We'll skip that one then. What's your favorite . . . flower?"

"Freesias," he responded. "They remind me of your scent. What's with all of the favorites?"

I shrugged. "Favorite animal?"

"Mountain lion."

"Why?"

"They taste good." He flashed his teeth.

I threw my head back and laughed wholeheartedly. "What if you leave your taste buds out of it? What animal would it be then?"

"Probably a . . . hmm . . ." He cupped his chin with my index and thumb, thinking. "No, I like mountain lions. Now – you. Who was . . . your first . . . crush?"

Did he really want to know the answer to that question? He seemed like the type to get extremely jealous, even of something as insignificant as the past. I met his gaze and he looked completely serious, so I mumbled, "I was in second grade. And he was in fifth. And he had blonde hair and blue eyes, but I only really liked him because it was, like, a thing. _Everyone _on the playground liked him." She winked at me. "Eh, I never had a chance. Besides. I like men with really messy, redish-brown hair and unusual golden eyes."

He raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" Well, he wasn't insane with jealousy. That was good.

"Oh, yeah," I confirmed. "But they're, like, really hard to come by. Not many of them around, _especially _in _Forks_."

He slid an arm over my shoulder, pulling me carefully into his side, and I snuggled into his hard torso. "I've got a thing for this short, brown-haired girl with matching eyes. She's kind of like my soul mate."

"Cool," I said lightly. "I envy her." We met each other's gazes for a second, grinning small grins.

"It's a thing," he informed me, continuing our little charade. "It's pretty serious. I mean – she's my life. I can't live without her."

"I'm sure she doesn't want to be without you, either."

He bent down and our lips met in a kiss, but this was different than our first kiss. It held all of our emotions, everything we've been holding back from each other. It was our first kiss as boyfriend-and-girlfriend, but it wouldn't be our last.

"So should we head back to the car?" he asked. "Before it gets too dark? I promised Charlie I'd have you home at a decent time."

I looked around, puzzled. We weren't anywhere near the parking lot he'd parked his Volvo in. "Where did we think we were going?"

"Wherever the wind wanted to take us," he breathed in my ear, puffing an extra exhale for special effects.

I laughed and pushed him back a little so I could look at his face. "Don't quote Disney movies."

"I was not quoting any movie at all!"

I tugged at his hand as we spun around to walk in the opposite direction. He followed loyally behind me. "That was from Pocahontas."

"It was not."

"It was."

"If you can show me the exact scene in that movie where those exact words have been said, I'll believe you, but –"

"The entire theme of Pocahontas is flowing with the wind!" I rolled my eyes.

"It's not!"

"It is!"  
"Well, this is the first I've heard of this."

I laughed. Vampires must not have been very up-to-date with their Disney movie facts.

It was easy. It was simple. Being with Edward was like breathing – call me cliché. I'd never been nervous around guys, because I'd never been interested in anyone before meeting _him_, but even now, having casual conversations was easy. It was so carefree and natural. I knew what to say, how to say it. I knew what he needed from me. And it was a fantastic feeling to have.

**So, this chapter started out as kind of anxious, but what did you think of the cheery ending? Did you like their first date? It was a carefree Edward and an easygoing Bella and they're bonding. Aren't they cute? Awww . . . man, do I wish Edward was real . . . **

**Please leave me a review! I've recently hit 100, and I'm ecstatic. Can we make it 200 before the story is over? **

**Thanks for reading. See you next chapter!**


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this story.**

**Edward's Point of View**

"So," Emmett began casually as we strolled through the forest kind-of far away from the house – we couldn't hunt nearby with Bella's scent being so close; it wasn't a danger to me because Bella's blood didn't burn my throat, but if Emmett or any of the others caught her scent while their instincts were locked on hunting, I'd end up killing him or her for threatening the life of my mate. He fixed his shirt, which now had a stain on the collar from the antelope he'd just consumed, and grinned at me. "Bella's taking everything . . .well."

"I think . . . her mind is locked on surviving the leukemia and so she didn't want to stress herself out by worrying about . . . us," I supposed, felling edgy and tense. I was too far away from her – the day had passed quickly and she was now sleeping in my bedroom under Esme's watchful eye, but I was still anxious. "She's willing to accept what we are because her mind is more preoccupied with surviving this cancer than protesting our truthfulness or sanity."

He shrugged. "Whatever, be all sociology-technical, but you know you're relieved that she took it so well."

I rolled my eyes. "Perhaps it's time to start actually paying attention in classes again, hmm?"

He punched my shoulder. "Shut up. I'm plenty smart – Rose is the one who's into the school thing. She's already talking about what college we're going to next year when we can't hang around Forks anymore." He shook his head. "The University of Montana – she wants to stay closer this time. We could make trips back here pretty quickly."

"Esme will like that," I said. "She hates when our family is separated. She's always at her happiest when we're all 'in high school' together, have you noticed that?"

"Well, we replace the baby she lost as a human, I guess," he agreed absentmindedly. "Hey, how'd we get away from the topic of you and Bella? Man, you're good."

I laughed, sitting down on a rock as we stopped racing through the forest. Ten feet in front of us, there was a huge waterfall, signaling that we'd climbed a good ways up the mountain. I scanned my surroundings and took a deep breath, searching for a mountain lion – those are my favorite. "Well, Emmett," I began, "you see, I've learned that each time I take a course as a student, I learn things in a different way because of the teaching style that the instructor uses. I've actually learned new things that other teachers haven't mentioned over the years of extra high school graduations. You would have, too, but you don't pay attention because you apparently already know all of the answers."

"I'm not gonna lie," he said defensively, "there've been tests that I've taken that I didn't know some answers on, but I can't be perfect on every test or the school would get suspicious."

"Maybe taking notes would be a positive thing for you to do."

"Let's talk about Bella."

"No, Emmett," I sighed.

"Yes, Edward," he mocked. "The entire family heard your conversation last night, you know. We heard you explain everything to her. I tried to listen, but then Rose got a little . . . frisky, and –"

"Believe me," I interrupted, holding a hand up to pause him, "I heard. The two of you aren't very quiet when you're intimate."

"Did Bella hear us?" he gasped, eyes going wide.

I shook my head. "You weren't _that _loud. Just loud enough for a _vampire _could hear."

Emmett nodded. "She took it better than Rose took it, and she was already a vampire when she found out the secret!" he continued, forgetting that we were even talking about his sexual activities.

I nodded my head. "Yes, I know. It made me feel fantastic to tell her everything, to have no secrets with her. She didn't panic, she didn't doubt. She just accepted. Carlisle says it's because she's my mate, and her subconscious mind knows it but her conscious mind doesn't."

"Makes sense," he sense. "So, speaking of sexual activities –"

"Why are you changing subjects so quickly today?" I laughed. "Where are the topic transitions that come with a normal conversation?"

"When are you and Bella going to _seal the bond_?"

"What _bond_?" I asked. "This isn't a sci-fi novel, Emmett. There aren't such things as mate bonds that will bind Bella to me for the rest of her life, human and beyond. We're not _that _unnatural to the human world. Just because vampires can be _mated _to each other doesn't mean that –"

"I know," he said, "but your instincts might calm themselves if you guys . . ." He chuckled. "_Do _it."

I shook my head. "It'll happen when Bella is ready, when she comes to me and says –"

"Oh, Edward, I'm ready now, take my virginity!" he mocked in a high-pitched fake female voice.

I rolled my eyes. "Your level of maturity hasn't risen at all in the past seventy years, has it?" I continued my previous sentence. "When she comes to me and says that she's ready to take that step in our relationship, we can . . . discuss it."

_Discuss it, _he repeated in his thoughts. "Dude, when Bella comes up to you and says she wants to have sex, you won't be able to hesitate a second, I guarantee you. I mean, man, I _still _can't turn Rose down when she gets _in the mood_, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

"I know what you're saying," I confirmed, and I rolled my eyes for the umpteenth time during that conversation. "Trust me, I get a whole new view of your intimate relationship with Rosalie. Sometimes your thoughts are so loud that I can't block them out at all."

"Have you seen us both naked, then?"

I nodded, grimacing. "I didn't like it, trust me."

"Keep your eyes off my wife!" Emmett scolded teasingly, as if I had a choice in whether or not I could read his thoughts or not. If I didn't have to, I wouldn't – it was like reading the mind of a ten-year-old. "Okay, I didn't realize it bothers you. Maybe I could talk Rosie into making a schedule, and then you can make sure you're not home, and then . . . problem solved."

"You can't put Rosalie on a schedule," I chuckled. "She'll have both your head and mine on display in your room."

"Well, maybe we can –"

"Emmett, I _really _don't want to talk about your sex life anymore."

He laughed and bounded off towards a clearing where I could smell a pack of deer who had gathered together.

They weren't mountain lions, but they did the job.

…

Bella was sitting on the couch in the living room, watching TV with Esme and Alice when Emmett and I returned, well-fed and out of conversations. She looked up when I entered, and a bright smile spread across her face. She was eating breakfast, and I scolded myself for not being there to make it for her, to greet her when she woke.

_It's okay, _Alice thought towards me. _She's not mad that you weren't there when she woke up. I told her that you'd gone out with Emmett to hunt, and she said, "Okay, so what's for breakfast?" She's adorable, Edward. We're best friends already. _

I nodded slightly, not enough for Bella to notice, but enough for Alice to know that I'd heard her. Bella took the last bite of her egg sunny-side-up and set her plate on the coffee table and reached for her cup of tea. Alice stood to retrieve her plate and take it away, but Bella protested. "I can do that, Alice! You don't have to baby me!"

"Oh please, Bella," was all my sister responded, and turned to zip into the kitchen. She was back and sitting next to Bella before Bella could even blink.

She gasped as she registered what Alice had just done. "Oh, my, I'll never get used to that," she breathed, holding a hand over her racing heart. She met my gaze, then, and her smile faded. Worry replaced it. "What's wrong, Edward?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, sweetheart." I began making my way over to her and Esme stood to leave the living room. I knew she had really just left so that I could sit next to my mate, and I made a mental note to remember to thank her later. "I was just watching. You fit so perfectly in my family already."

"That's because she was always meant to be with us," Alice said matter-of-factly.

Bella inched closer to me as I took Esme's abandoned seat, wrapping her arms around my neck and tucking herself into my side. She sat on her knees with her legs curled under her; one of her thighs slid behind the small of my back and the other draped itself over my own thighs so that she was truly clinging to me, tucking her head into my neck and sighing contently. I slid both arms around her waist and held her to me. "I missed you," she whispered.

"As I missed you," I answered back.

Alice stood, skipping past Jasper to grab his arm and make him drop the book he'd been reading in the corner of the room. I heard them zoom up to their bedroom and talk about nothing in particular.

Emmett was in he and Rose's bedroom, listening to Rosalie talk about the new outfits she'd picked up at Port Angeles the previous day. In his mind, I observed as he watched her proudly display each shirt or pair of pants before hanging it in her closet which was much bigger than Emmett's.

In Carlisle's office, he was watching Esme as she sat on the corner of his desk, keeping him company as he worked slowly through is paperwork that he would need to take to the hospital with him that evening – he'd taken the night shift today because Alice had seen the rain stopping around noon so that the sun could come out. We'd all be stuck here until tomorrow morning. Alice had already explained that to Bella for me while I was hunting.

I kissed Bella's temple and nodded at the television. "What's this movie called?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. I just turned it on."

I nodded, and we sat in silence as she watched. I wasn't paying attention to the plot; I was more interested in Bella's expressions as the plot twisted and changed. She was adorable when her face would grow happy or sad, according to the movie's music, and I thought about how easily manipulated human emotions were.

My mind drifted to the thoughts and actions of my family as I grew more and more bored with the sappy romance playing on the screen in front of me.

_. . . go hunting tomorrow. _That was the mind of Alice. _I'm not thirsty, but there's nothing to do around here . . . Why won't Jasper take me out on dates anymore? Am I that boring? Embarrassing? I only commented a girl on her outfit _once _on our last date, so what's his problem? _

Jasper's thoughts were also centered on his mate. _She's brooding again. Oh, boy, what did I do this time? Did I forget to compliment her hair today? No, I did that . . . What have a said to her today? Oh, _that's _the problem – I must have been talking to Emmett too much and not paying attention to her . . . but that doesn't make sense, either, because she's so beautiful today and I couldn't stop watching her. Maybe I accidentally stepped on her foot? She won't even look at me . . . oh, jeez . . ._

I chuckled. I'd have to fill him in later, but leave him enough time to plan a nice, romantic date for the two of them this evening.

_Why can't Emmett put down that stupid video game? He's such a child, I swear. _Ah, Rosalie. As lovely as always.

I focused on Emmett for a second. _No, no, no . . . turn left, turn left! No, the other way! Why won't this stupid controller work? I bet Rose did something to mess it up . . . why is she sitting on the bed fuming right now? Seriously? God, I'm gonna have to make up for _this _tonight. _

Carlisle's thoughts were more mature. He was calculating, figuring out what medication would work the best on all of his individuals. _Perhaps I could try a mixture of the two for Lisa Harvey . . . she's been too weak lately and I know her husband is worried about her strength deteriorating . . . _

– _should call Tanya in Alaska and see if they want to meet up somewhere when school is dismissed,_ Esme was thinking.

I jerked up, sitting straighter as the casualness of the morning stopped abruptly, and Bella looked up at me curiously. "What's wrong, Edward?"

"It's nothing for you to worry about," I said lightly, not meeting her eyes, because that was the only way I could word that response and not lie to her. But that was a problem – meeting the Denalis for spring break – because of my past with Tanya. Bella would be spending spring break with us, I was sure – I couldn't be away from her for more than ten minutes before feeling a tug in my chest, let alone be miles and miles away from her for a week.

Bella and I had yet to talk about _old flames_, as Alice had once put it in a conversation with Bella, and I was worried that Bella would be angry. Would she be upset that we couldn't have our first times with each other, even though we're mates? I will always regret not waiting to be intimate with a woman before finding my mate, but I'd been so lonely for so long and Tanya was beautiful. Of course, Bella was much more beautiful than Tanya would ever be, but at the time . . . well, Bella hadn't even been born yet when I'd been with her.

That really made our relationship sound inappropriate.

"No," Bella insisted, pulling back to rest her hands on my chest. "It's something. What's wrong?"

"You don't need to worry about it, sweetheart," I insisted. "It's not a big deal. Just something that Esme was thinking."

When I said Esme's name, her mind shot to me. _What? _she thought. _You don't want the Denali coven to come see us? I thought it would be good to introduce Bella to them – after all, she's your mate. She's a part of the family now. _

I couldn't answer her without keying Bella in on the topic of the hour, but I was saved by her continuous curiosity. "Well, then, why are _you _worrying about it?" she asked, one hand fisting in my shirt tightly.

"Esme was just having some . . . _thoughts_."

She raised an eyebrow. "About what?"

"About us . . . possibly . . . having visitors during spring break," I forced out. "Perhaps for a few days before Easter."

"Visitors?" she repeated, a smile breaking across her face. For a moment I was lost in her absolute beauty before I remembered what we were discussing. "Like who? Like, friends of yours? Edward, that would be so much fun! I would love to meet your friends."

I tensed. _No, you don't_. I knew what would happen if Tanya came and met Bella – she'd be bitter, unreceptive, and unwelcoming. She'd tell Bella all about the relationship the two of us had once had, and she wouldn't keep her from the _intimate_ details. Bella would be heartbroken by the end of their visit and I would be left to comfort my hurting mate.

And then there's the possibility that I will kill Tanya before they can leave . . .

"Our . . . _cousins_ of sort from Alaska might come," I said, "but it's very unlikely that they will."

_Don't you want to introduce Tanya to her replacement? _Rosalie sneered at me through her thoughts. I rolled my eyes. She'd always thought Tanya and I were a good pair. How wrong she was.

_What's wrong with the Denalis, Edward? _Alice demanded. _They're our family. _

"Why won't they come?" Bella asked me, distracting me from their thoughts. "What do you mean, _of sorts_?"

"The Denalis are . . . well, in the vampire world, there are . . . groups," I began. "We call them covens. Our family is referred to as the Olympic Coven because of our permanent residence in this part of the United States. The Denalis call themselves the Denali Coven. They're the only other coven in the entire world of vampires that share our eating habits."

"There's another . . . _coven_ that lives off animal blood?" Her eyes widened in shock.

I nodded. "We've considered each other distant family for many years."

"What's the problem, though?" she questioned curiously. "Do you not want me to meet your extended family?"

"Of course I _want _you to meet them," I assured her instantly, soothing the hurt in her eyes, "but . . . I think . . . that you might not have kind feelings toward them once you've gotten to know them."

_So that's your problem, _Alice snapped in her head. _You just don't want Tanya to meet Bella. You think she'll offend Bella by saying something private about your past relationship. _

"Does it not sound like something Tanya would do, Alice?" I shouted back, unable to hold it in anymore. I turned my eyes towards the staircase so that Bella could better understand that I wasn't speaking to her, but to my sister. Alice had explained my power and those of her and Jasper for me. She hadn't left much for_ me _to tell her, but that made it easier. Now we could just be a couple; we, as a family, as a whole, could be ourselves around Bella. But still, Bella leaned back, looking at me with a confused expression until she realized that I was answering someone's thoughts.

"What does Tanya do?" she asked, but her eyes were knowing. "Wait. Tanya, as in . . . your ex-girlfriend."

I cleared my throat. Thanks, Alice. "There was a time when the Denali coven lived with us. They moved here with us when we moved from Alaska. And, yes, I was . . . involved with Tanya. She's what worries me." I paused, thinking of how I could describe her without being too un-gentleman-like. "She's not . . . exactly . . . a shy woman. She's very jealous as well. I think when she finds out that I've mated, she'll be very upset. She's always hated me for ending it. That's why they all moved out, back to Alaska." I looked away from her, watching the television screen as I continued. "It wasn't working. We weren't mated. It was pointless for us to remain a couple. And even if we _had _been together all these years, I would have left her the moment I laid eyes on _you_, and that wouldn't be fair to her. It didn't feel right. Not like it does when I'm with you. I never loved her, and I never would have been able to. Not like I love you, Bella."

She rested her head back on my shoulder, smiling. "I love you, too," she whispered, "but I . . . I mean, I want to meet them. They're a part of you. Maybe a small part, but still, a part. Tanya's a part of your past. I mean . . . you lost your virginity to her." I felt rather than saw the blush burn her cheeks – the skin of my chest felt them warm and her scent grew impossibly stronger, but it didn't bother me.

"I wish I had had enough sense to wait until I found you before committing that act," I told her, shaking my head at myself. "But Tanya was always pushy in that department. I think it was more satisfying for her than it ever was for me." I chuckled.

"Do they visit a lot?"

"Not really," I said. "That's why Esme wants to invite them down."

_It would mean a lot to me, Edward, _Esme confirmed.

Carlisle chimed in. _Your mother wants to feel normal, Edward. Normal people have family over on the holidays. They couldn't make it for Christmas and so Easter is the next best thing. Don't take this away from her, please. She does so much for you. Think about that. _

"Don't uninvited them on my behalf," Bella ordered, tucking her face tighter in my neck. "I think it would be fun. To meet them, at that is. I'd love that, Edward."

Esme was thrilled. _I'll call them this evening! _

_Bella is such a loving girl_, Alice thought. _How'd she get mated to _you_? _

I rolled my eyes, but stress had settled in my body. It wouldn't be a fun visit for me at all.

* * *

**Okay. So . . . will there be future drama between Edward and Tanya? Haha, no. Will Tanya be jealous? Haha, yes. Will Tanya hurt Bella? No. Is there a reason the Denali clan is coming into this story? Yep! I promise, they are important. Please forgive me if you aren't a big Tanya fan :(. It's only a few chapters. **

**Thank you for reading! See you next chapter. **


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this chapter.**

**Edward's Point of View**

**Chapter Sixteen of Twenty-Nine**

The Denali coven would arrive in two weeks. Esme hadn't mentioned Bella during her chat with Kate, which was probably a mistake. When Tanya arrived to find Bella in my arms, she wouldn't be happy. That I was positive of. But I had refused to contact her personally for years and wasn't going to make that exception now. I didn't want to talk to her.

I felt a smack on the back of my head and looked up to see Rosalie glowering at me. "Are you going to just sit and sulk all day, or are you going to help us get everything prepared?"

A few of Carlisle's associates were coming over to our house for dinner that night at five-thirty to welcome a new doctor who had just joined the staff. It was a big deal because in Forks, Washington, it was rare if _anyone_ new moved into town, let alone a skilled doctor. This man, though, wasn't nearly as skilled as Carlisle. Esme had assured Carlisle as he left for work this morning that the party would be ready when he arrived home at five o'clock. Everyone had their job – Alice was cleaning the house unnecessarily, Emmett was washing the dusty china set that hadn't ever been washed, Esme and Rosalie were planning out the dinner and what times they would have to begin preparing each dish, and Jasper was out hunting because of the amount of humans that would be surrounding him this evening.

What was I doing? I was sitting in the middle of the living room, more or less pouting and moping. I missed Bella, but she was with her human friends today – Melissa Grant, Jessica Stanley, and that vile Eric Yorkie. I was positive that Mike Newton would show up, and I wasn't thrilled by that at all. But Bella had made these plans with her friends a while ago, and I wouldn't stand in the way of her human activities. She needed to get out and be with actual, breathing creatures.

Not that we didn't breathe in this house – but we didn't really need to.

I felt another smack. "Edward! Seriously, I wasn't kidding."

I rolled my eyes. "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know," she snapped, "but do _something_."

"Does Emmett need help with anything?"

"No, Emmett's good," Emmett called.

Rosalie rolled her eyes again, this time at his incorrect usage of the third person point of view. "Go help Alice or something. Or find Jasper. He's probably lonely."

I stood and strode out the door – there was no way I was going to take orders from Alice. She'd have me cleaning the toilets that had only ever been used by Bella so far, and that was not happening.

Jasper wasn't hard to find. His thoughts tended to be extremely loud when he was hunting.

_Look at that_, he was thinking to himself. _Look at them all – just sitting there. Sitting ducks. Well, not really ducks, but – _his thoughts stopped abruptly, and I was given the image of him pushing a tree branch away to reveal a field of deer, just standing there, nibbling on the grass and doing nothing to harm anyone.

Jasper was going to slaughter every one of them. I sighed.

"Jasper," I said, "perhaps it's not a good idea to wipe out the _entire _deer population of Forks. We do have to hunt here for the next . . . two years at least. At least leave two that will reproduce," I teased.

He slipped from his crouch. "I need to feed. If there's going to be a ton of humans at our house tonight, I'll need to be full."

I nodded, agreeing. "It's good to be prepared. But you've been doing well with Bella being around."

He shrugged. "Bella's . . . different. She's your mate. I feel the love that you feel for her and the love that she returns for you. It's enough to keep me from . . . I don't know, wanting to drain her." He looked back towards the meadow of deer. We were speaking too low and too quickly for the deer to be able to hear us. "I could never cause you the pain that you would feel if Bella was gone."

I nodded again. "But these humans will all have families at home, waiting for them. Wives, husbands, children. Well, most of their wives will probably be with them this evening. But they all have lives."

He shrugged. "I know that _now_. But when they get here, and I smell them, and I see the blood rushing through their body just below that _thin, weak _layer of skin, that rationality goes away completely. That monster that lies dormant in me rises up and I –"

"I know," I said. "I know, trust me. We all know. It's in every one of us."

"But you don't feel that way towards Bella," he stated. He didn't have to ask; he'd felt my emotions when we've been together in the house. He knew that bloodlust was the farthest thing from my mind when I'm with Bella.

"No," I agreed, "I don't. It's because she's my mate. She always has been."

"And here I thought you didn't have one," he teased, kicking at a rock with his toe. It went flying towards the herd of deer and they all scattered, running as fast as they could in the opposite direction.

I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you slept with Tanya," he said with a shrug. "I thought vampires couldn't be intimate with anyone before they met their mates."

I'd thought about this already. "Bella's human," I said. "When you were changed, I bet there was this instant feeling in your chest. It was an incomplete feeling. You knew something was missing, didn't you? And that feeling didn't go away until you met Alice. Am I correct?" When he nodded, I continued. "Bella's human," I said again. "My body – my instincts, I should say, didn't . . . didn't _feel _that I had a mate? I don't know how to explain it, but since Bella wasn't a vampire, there wasn't a mate-pull for me to feel, I suppose . . ." I trialed off, realizing that I probably wasn't making any sense. I swallowed unnecessarily. "I didn't have that empty feeling until I first smelt Bella's scent, and so I . . . I didn't feel . . . wrong while I was with Tanya, I suppose. Don't ask me how _she _was able to do it, because I have no idea, because she has to have a mate, too, right? I mean, every vampire has a mate . . . I mean . . . I mean . . ."

Jasper stood silently, waiting for me to get myself together. Bella had been completely understanding about my past with Tanya, but it still made me sick that I'd been able to have sexual relations with her. What had been going through my head at that time? I'd seen what the feeling of longing for a mate felt like through the minds of the many vampires that I'd met in my years, but I'd never felt that emotion. I'd thought I was meant to be alone because of that lack of emptiness in me. I'd been so wrong.

"Of course I know that feeling, Edward," Jasper finally said as my silence lengthened. "I've heard of it being called a mating-pull."

"Yes," I agreed, still lost in my thoughts.

He felt my remorseful emotions. "She's forgiven you, Edward. Forgive yourself, now."

…

Esme was at the door before the humans even had a chance to ring the bell. Carlisle cleared his throat, slipping an arm around his wife's waist, and gave a disapproving look.

Esme smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "but this is the first time I've gotten to do this! Oh, honey, do you know that I love dinner parties?"

"Dinner parties, during which you'll always be serving and eating food that you'll have to choke back up later?" he teased her lightly, flipping the rest of the lights in the living room on because we had only had about half of them on before. Humans need to have more light illuminating the room than we do. "That sounds appealing to you, darling?"

She shrugged, grinning, and finally the doorbell rang. She spun around to look at us – Emmett, Jasper, and I. Alice and Bella were in the kitchen – Bella was the only person who knew what to do with the food once it was prepared – and Rosalie was upstairs, set on making a fashionably-late entrance. How that can happen when one lives at the destination of the party, I didn't know, but arguing with Rosalie equaled a death wish.

Esme surveyed us, disappointed.

"What?" Emmett yelled, widening his arms.

"Esme, we're wearing the suits," Jasper complained. Alice had designed and created three form-fitting suits for us to wear this evening. They were highly uncomfortable and it was a good thing I didn't need to move around very much because this thing didn't leave much room for it.

She shook her head. "You're all too . . . _vampire_," she nitpicked.

I looked at us all. Emmett was sitting ramrod-straight on the coffee table, Jasper was in the corner of the room with his hands tucked behind his back stiffly, and I was tense against the wall a few feet away. None of us were breathing out of habit – we all knew the pain of human scent was coming – and we didn't look human at all.

I sighed and sat down on the loveseat next to me, placing my right ankle on my left knee and leaning back, stretching my arms across the back of the chair.

Emmett zoomed over to the couch behind the coffee table and settled into the cushions.

Jasper leaned casually against the wall behind him and picked up a book from the bookshelf to his left. He opened it and began to pretend to read it, but didn't move out of the corner. Esme's thoughts were negative towards his position in the room but knew it was best for him to keep his distance when the humans were first introduced.

All of this occurred within about fifteen seconds when it came to human time, and so the people waiting on the other side of the door wouldn't even notice the delay. Esme opened the door with a bright smile on her face. Carlisle stood behind her and greeted his guests.

Alice appeared in the doorway and immediately looked to Jasper. She frowned. "Really, Jasper?" Her tone was too low and speed was too fast for the doctors who were entering the room to notice her speaking. "Oh, c'mon, guys, don't be so antisocial." She then turned towards the guests, smiling as widely as Esme. "Hi, there, it's so nice to meet you," she said sweetly, shaking a woman's hand, "I'm Alice."

"Hi, I'm Clara," the woman greeted. "I'm Dr. Harold's wife."

Alice had never heard of Dr. Harold from Carlisle, but didn't show it. "Oh, that's so nice – he's a very nice man."

I stood, and just as I was about to introduce myself to the new doctor who had inspired the idea for this dinner party – I'd met all of Carlisle's doctor colleagues before – but I was stopped by the most beautiful human being to ever walk the earth.

Bella peeked around the corner from the kitchen, looking nervous. She was absolutely gorgeous in the purple sundress that Alice had picked out for her to wear. Her hair was curled and hung a little below her shoulders and her make-up was subtle and she was stunning.

I walked over to her at the fastest human pace I could pull off and offered my hand. "Bella, you look absolutely spectacular." She smiled up at me and accepted my hand. I pulled it up to my lips and pressed a kiss on the soft skin of her palm. "I hope you have a wonderful evening, Miss Swan."

She giggled at my sudden old-fashioned actions. "I don't think Esme intended me to be a guest," she laughed softly. "I thought I was one of the help."

"Of course you're not, Bella," Esme whispered to her as she passed, leading the doctors who had arrived into the dining room while Carlisle waited for the ones who would soon be there. "You're a part of the family, but you're also our guest. And you're the only one who I can trust to give me an honest opinion about my food."

I smiled at her, and Bella mirrored my action as I began to lead her into the dining room. I pulled out a chair for her, across from Rosalie and next to Alice. Carlisle sat at the end of the table closest to the door that we'd just entered through, the door that could be used to locate the kitchen across the hall. Emmett was to Carlisle's immediate left and Rosalie's right. To Carlisle's left, Esme sat, and then came Jasper, Alice, Bella, and finally, me. The new doctor in town sat at the very end, and I had yet to learn his name. The rest of the doctors and their wives or fiancés or girlfriends filled in the empty seats to the very large table that Esme had ordered _specially _for this party – it had wooden panels that could be removed and added to make the table the perfect size for whatever the gathering would bring.

Emmett, Jasper, and I had been recruited to serve the food because we were the least enthusiastic to actually consume it. If we sat down to eat later than the guests, we could get away with eating less. I plopped a spoonful of potatoes on each person's plate as Jasper followed behind with mashed potatoes and Emmett allowed them to pick out their own steak or chicken. When all of that was served, we went back into the kitchen and picked up a new dish, and so on, and so forth.

To sum up that entire meal, the humans enjoyed it immensely, and the vampires were upset about having to hack it up later.

After dinner, Emmett and Jasper cleared the table while Esme and Carlisle offered wine to all of their guests. Esme didn't drink any wine – she was, apparently, anti-alcohol. We all knew that she just didn't want to taste that wine again in about two hours. Carlisle downed a few drinks, mostly because he wanted to out-last the new doctor, who I now knew was named Dr. Henry Jenson. Carlisle was a very gentle man, but that evening, he made sure that Henry Jenson was aware his superiority in the eyes of the population of Forks, Washington.

…

Esme was happy with us all – she'd gotten to play human for a little while, and while we had all choked our dinner back up – excluding Bella – she'd offered us all a warm smile and a huge thank you.

Now, I was sitting with Bella in my bedroom. She was watching a pointless television show while I sat with her between my legs and in my arms, safe where she belonged.

"It was nice, you know," she whispered as the show cut to commercial.

"What was?" I murmured in her ear.

"Being with you today," she clarified. "Being with you and your family. It was like you all were human. It was nice, sharing a meal with you, seeing you be . . . _human_."

"You've seen me be human before," I reminded her, but my heart was left aching. Bella had been so entirely accepting of everything she'd found out about these past few days. She'd never shown fear or resentment towards me or anyone in my family. She had been completely welcoming of what we are; she'd even expressed the desire to one day become like we are. I wasn't sure how I felt about that at first. Could I destroy her soul like mine had been destroyed, only so I could keep her with me forever? I didn't stay hesitant for long when Carlisle had reminded me in his thoughts of the way I'd reacted when I found out about Bella's illness. Of course I would change her.

But her soft voice right then had reminded me that Bella was human herself, and being with me would take many normal human activities from her. The odds were that we wouldn't go on dinner dates to her favorite restaurants very often – not because I wouldn't take her, but because she wouldn't want to go knowing that I'd have to eat and be uncomfortable until I threw it up out of my body sometime later. We would never get to go to the beach with her and her friends as a couple, as she had today. We would never get to be _normal_. Something would always be holding us back from doing most of the things that her human coupled-friends would be doing. And when we eventually got married, I would never be able to give her kids.

But because I was a selfish man, I knew I would never be able to give her up. She was my everything, and always would be.

It was then that I realized that my relationship with Bella would require more work than I'd ever thought it would – at least, until she was changed.

* * *

**Author's Note:**** Kind of a pointless chapter. It's more of a filler than anything, really. Just fluff. Sorry if that disappointed you. But as usual, please leave your thoughts and comments in a review. **

**Favorite quote: **

"Being with you today," she clarified. "Being with you and your family. It was like you all were human. It was nice, sharing a meal with you, seeing you be . . . _human_."

**Thank you for reading! See you next chapter. **


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**The next few chapters ****after**** this one will include more of Edward and Bella bonding with each other – mate-time, ya know? I know that there hasn't been much of them as a couple in this story yet, but it's coming. Don't worry you're pretty little heads. Also, some important information will be discussed in this chapter. **

**Disclaimer - I don't own the Twilight Saga. No copyright infringement is intended by the posting of this chapter. **

**Chapter Seventeen of Twenty-Nine**

…

**Bella's Point of View**

Two days after the Cullens' dinner party, I went back to Forks Hospital for another chemotherapy treatment. Edward went with me, for moral support and because his instincts had taken over control when it came to my leukemia. My dad was going to meet us there about a half an hour after my appointment, soon enough to hear the test results.

The news of the blood test Carlisle had taken the previous day in their home wasn't as good as we'd hoped – it wasn't awful, but it was enough to send Edward into a panic.

"The little _markers_," Carlisle said, "if you will, is higher than what they were the last time. It's nothing to get worked up about and – Edward, would you please sit down and hear me out?"

I looked to where Edward had stood and begun to pace around the small hospital room. I gripped my chair and bit down softly on my lip.

Edward snarled. "I've already heard what you have to say, Carlisle, remember?" He roughly jabbed a finger into his temple. His lips pulled over his teeth and he growled. "It's a step in the wrong direction. We should contact the Volturi now."

The Volturi – the government of sorts for the vampire world. Why would they need to contact them because my markers went up? "What?"

"That's not necessary yet, Edward, and you know it," Carlisle snapped at his son, slamming his clipboard down so hard it snapped in half. He looked down at it in dismay, but didn't move to fix it. His eyes met mine, but he spoke to Edward. "Let me explain this to Bella. It _is _her body that we're speaking of." He took a deep breath, but I spoke before he did.

"Why do you need to call the Volturi?"

Carlisle glanced sharply at Edward for putting the thought in my head. "We'll discuss that this evening, Bella, at our house. Where there's no threat of –" He glanced at the door. ". . . unwanted ears." He licked his lips, playing human, and started his explanation. "I've explained what the markers in your blood mean, haven't I?"

I nodded. "They're the white blood cells that show up to be abnormal."

Carlisle smiled at me, and both he and Edward's attention shot to the door. "Charlie's coming," Edward muttered, still furious.

I patted the seat beside me. "C'mere, sit down next to me." He did, and I offered my hand. He held it gently, as if he were afraid of hurting me. It was probably a good fear – he was quite upset at that moment.

Charlie opened the door a moment later. He grinned at all of us for a second before taking a seat on my other side that Edward wasn't on. He exhaled loudly in my ear. "Hey, Bells." His arm slid around my shoulders and he crushed me to his side. I cuddled into my father's warmth. "Good news, doc?"

Carlisle's smile was tight, forced. "Well, we don't have _awful_ news."

Charlie's smile faded slowly. "But it's not good. Whatever the results are . . . they aren't good."

The doctor explained everything to Charlie had I'd been too impatient to wait for, and then proceeded to continue to tell us what he'd been about to tell me. "The number of leukemia cells is rising," he murmured softly. "Remember when I said that eventually, the cells that should have died and haven't yet will suffocate the normal cells and prevent them from doing their job?"

I nodded, but Charlie was staring out the window like Edward, pouting and fuming. I could practically see the smoke coming out of his ears, as if he were a cartoon on a TV show.

"Well, the numbers are rising to the point where you might now begin to have trouble breathing every now and then, after exerting yourself too much. Here's some good news – no physical education class. I'm giving you a doctor's excuse."

I smiled; my clumsiness could be put to a rest for a little while. At least while I sit on the sidelines in gym class.

"What does this mean?" Charlie said weakly. "What do we do now?"

"Nothing has to change yet," Carlisle responded. "We'll see how the results turn out in another two weeks, after two more doses of Chemotherapy. If the numbers are the same or higher, we'll up the chemo dosage and possibly rethink the small radiation. We'll see."

Charlie nodded. "Doc? Can I . . . uh, talk to you privately?"

Carlisle's brow pulled together, but he nodded. Edward grasped my hand and we walked out together to sit on the chairs outside of the room. Edward slid his arm around my waist and pulled me to his side, his eyes trained on the door we had just exited out of.

I sniffled. "What's wrong, Edward?"

He swallowed and shook his head, his eyes creasing.

"Edward," I insisted.

"Everything's fine, Bella," he said tensely, stiffly. His mouth was turned up in an angry grimace. Everything about his body language said _furious _and I turned my whole torso to face him.

"No, everything is not fine," I said, feeling a little hurt. Why wouldn't he talk to me? I mean, we're mates – like, for life. We're meant to be together. Could he not be honest with me?

He ignored me, remaining focused on the conversation being held inside the room across the hall from us. His hand was resting on my knee while the rest of his arm was around my waist, and suddenly I didn't want him to touch me. I pushed off the bench, only to be jerked back when his stone arm didn't give me any leverage. It knocked the breath out of me.

He looked down at me, finally, and relaxed his arm down to a human-standard. He probably hadn't even realized he'd been so tense – it hadn't hurt when he'd been holding me, but still. "What was that, Bella?" he asked.

This time it was me ignoring him. I stood again, and this time his arm was tranquil enough for me to brush it off. I began to stomp down the hall, but I didn't get far before he was right there.

"Where are you going, Bella?" he demanded. "Charlie wants to drive you home – he's inviting me to dinner tonight, according to his thoughts."

"Well, I'll have to talk him out of that," I snapped.

He jerked back as if I'd slapped him, gasping. "What? Bella, I thought . . . what's gotten into you?"

"If you can't be honest with me," I growled, turning my back to him and leaning against the wall next to me, "then don't expect me to want you around!"

"What? Bella –"

"It's stressful for me, too, Edward," I whispered, still not looking at him. "I know you're upset about everything, but I'm your girlfriend – I'm supposed to be your mate."

He slithered his arms around my waist, holding me to him from behind. He breathed in my ear. "You are, Bella. You _are _my mate."

"Alice and Jasper talk all the time," I mumbled. "They don't have secrets from each other, and they tell each other what's on their minds. And Emmett and Rosalie talk a lot, too. So do Esme and Carlisle. But you're not open with me with your emotions – not like Jasper and Emmett are with their mates. Is it because I'm human? Because I'm small and weak?"

He kissed my cheek tenderly. "Of course not, sweetheart," he swore. "You're not small and weak. I mean, you _are _quite small – how tall are you, five foot four?" He shook his head. "Never mind that. You're strong – Bella, you're facing this illness with such will and strength. I'm so proud of you for that. I just . . . there's still . . . _things _that you don't fully understand."

"So explain them to me," I begged, finally giving in and turning around to peer up at him.

He had his eyes closed, but when he felt me turn around, he slowly opened them. Glancing behind me, he latched an arm around my waist and tugged me over to the bench we'd previously been occupying. "Some unwanted ears were edging closer," he said, and I suddenly remembered that we were in a hospital for my check-up with his dad. "I was upset because of a lot of reasons, love, but I can't explain them to you _here_. Alice is planning on inviting you and Charlie over, despite his invitation for me to join you at your house. I promise I'll find us some private time to talk about it – and if not, there's always tonight."

Edward had taken to showing up at my house in the middle of the night, after Charlie had fallen asleep. His instincts made him very upset during the time that we were apart. Actually, most of his reasons for being around me so much were his 'instincts' supposedly. I was noticing a pattern. But I wasn't about to complain.

I shrugged. "Okay. But you are _definitely _telling me everything – the Volturi, your anger . . . everything."

He smiled. "Absolutely."

I remembered something abruptly. "What's my dad saying in there?" I asked. "What does he want?"

His eyes turned distant as he focused his mind on what was happening in the room across from us. He paused for a second. "Charlie's asking about the side effects of the stronger chemotherapy."

"Oh," I breathed as his arm slipped back around me. He must have sensed that I was more welcoming to his embrace now. "What's he saying? Carlisle, I mean?"

"If we need to start the stronger chemo, your hair will most likely fall out," he said softly, quietly, as if he was afraid of breaking me. "You'll grow weaker – the chemo is already killing the red blood cells in your body that have been affected, as well as the white ones. The problem is that the chemo isn't selective to what cells it kills, so the _good _cells are killed along with it. That's why its patients often grow weak and are more susceptible to disease and viruses. You'll probably frequently get common colds and small illnesses like that."

I tucked my head against his shoulder. "Good thing my boyfriend is so strong and can help me get around before I recover."

He chuckled in my ear, tightening his arms around me. "Absolutely. Oh, that brings up a key point that I'd like to discuss with you."

I looked up, startled. "Of course. Go ahead."

He licked his lips nervously. "Esme . . . had an idea."

My eyebrows pulled together. "An idea?"

"Yes," he confirmed with a stiff nod. "She's noticed that Charlie hasn't been able to be around much lately; she doesn't like that you're alone."

I frowned. "He used up most of his vacation time during my two weeks in the hospital and the rest during the time I was recovering for the few days after I got to go home – he didn't want to leave me alone for a few days, even though _that _part of my problems are over."

"Yes, it _is _a good thing that Carol was able to help you get you're anxiety about your mother under control," he agreed lightly. "Do you still have . . . problems with your grief, by the way?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes little things set me off, but it really is manageable now. I haven't blacked out since that time the day you first brought me my homework in the hospital."

"That's fantastic, Bella." He blinked. "How did you get me so off topic?"

I shrugged, smirking.

He rolled his eyes playfully. "Back to what I was saying – Esme noticed Charlie's frequent absence, and she knows that . . . as your chemotherapy treatments progress . . . that you'll be weaker and possibly more ill, and she can't stand the fact that you'll be home alone so often by yourself. She's planning on speaking with Charlie one of these days to see if – uh, to see if maybe . . . you'd like to stay with us for a while, while Charlie's busy at work. I've read in his mind that there are a lot of out-of-town cases that he's been swamped with lately."

I lifted my head to meet his eyes, startled.

His face turned nervous, his body going rigid. The arm that was over my shoulder lifted up so that he wasn't touching me, but it still hovered there in midair. "Unless . . . unless that's not something that you would want."

"No, no!" I exclaimed. When his face fell even more, I backtracked. "I-I mean, no, wait Edward, that's not what I meant. I _meant _of _course_ that's something I would want! I would love that!"

The crease that had appeared on his forehead disappeared and he relaxed his posture. I felt his arm rest on my shoulders once again. "But you're not . . . as ecstatic as I thought you'd be. I mean, this would be a great opportunity for us, for our relationship –" He paused abruptly, glancing around to make sure that the hallway we were in was still deserted. There wasn't a person in sight, so he continued. "A mate-to-mate relationship, as most vampire couples call it, takes time . . . bonds from, unbreakable bonds that make those vampires closer than they'll ever be to anyone. I've spoken to Carlisle and Jasper about it, because they are the most knowledgeable of vampire history – even though Jasper is considered young by vampire standards – and they don't know _how _it will be with us." He bent even lower to whisper softly in my ear. "As far as we know, you and I are the first mated couple consisting of a vampire and a human, but the only way to know for sure would be to contact the Volturi – but I don't want them to know about us, yet. I don't want them to know about you."

"Why not?" I whispered back gently. His other arm opposite the one on my shoulder had found its way onto my lap after I'd urgently wrapped my fingers tightly around his forearm. I squeezed it to punctuate my confusion and slight fear.

"I don't know what Aro will do," he said, looking away from me, watching the floor. "He's a very . . . unpredictable man when I'm not standing in front of him, reading his mind. He might demand that you be changed as soon as possible." He breathed a sigh on my ear. "I couldn't stand it if they forced you to become like me before you're ready – you're only sixteen. You want to be at least eighteen, don't you? And the odds are they wouldn't let _me _do it – they'd do it themselves." He growled. "And I can't _stand _the thought of your immortal life branching from _Aro's _venom!" His last sentence was a whispered shout, and I wrapped my arms around his neck comfortingly.

I hesitated. Would now be the right time to ask about his mentioning of the Volturi earlier? _Now _he seemed to be completely against them knowing I exist. I decided to ask. "What did you mean earlier, about contacting the Volturi now?"

He sighed, reaching up to rub between his eyes. "If we want to change you, we have to first get it Okayed with Aro in Italy."

"Why?" I asked.

"Covens are only allowed to have four people," he said. "If a vampire changes someone, that person is automatically given a spot in that vampire's coven, if they want it. Or they can go through the process of entering another coven, or become a nomad. Either way, I can't change you without their authorization, because obviously you'll want to remain with us. Our coven already has seven vampires, and that's just because Carlisle used to be a part of the Volturi, a long time ago, and Aro has a soft spot for him."

"Can't we have me officially accepted into your . . . coven after I've been changed?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I still would have changed you, and by law that gives you a spot in my coven. That will anger Aro because he will then have no choice in the matter, and he'll kill us all. We have to get permission _before _it happens. And it's not like we can just . . . _hide _you for a while, after your change, because every May, Aro sends out a bunch of vampires from his guard to 'visit' the covens that have five members or more. He worries that one day, a coven will grow strong enough to overthrow his power. So, if a Volturi visitor comes by and a coven has more vampires than the ones that have been reported to them, the entire coven will be slaughtered." He paused. "If we change you, we _have _to get permission to allow you into our coven _first_," he repeated, scowling. "The laws they make up are ridiculous."

I brought us back to the topic at hand before he really got upset. "I'd love to stay with you and your family sometimes, Edward," I whispered to him. I made sure my voice was gentle and soft because frankly, at that moment he looked as if one loud word would shatter him into hundreds of separate pieces. I added a lighter comment. "But good luck convincing Charlie that you're not just inviting me over to steal my virtue."

He chuckled lowly. "That's hardly the reason. But, of course, I would never turn you down."

I gasped, and we made eye contact again. "Oh . . ." What should I say to that? I wasn't ready for an intimate relationship.

He was about to continue his statement when his eyes turned black and snapped to the door. He sucked in a breath sharply.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?"

"Charlie's asking about your life expectancy," he croaked, his face contorting with pain. "He wants to know how long Carlisle thinks you'll survive. Up until now, he's just been venting about all of the stress that he's had – he wanted to know if Carlisle could suggest a therapist – but now . . ."

I stroked his arm. "It's okay, Edward. I'm going to be okay."

He wasn't listening to me. His entire attention was on the door. Or, more specifically, what was going on behind that door. "Charlie's coming out. He's done talking."

"Did – did Carlisle give him an answer?"

"Yes."

I watched his face. He wasn't flipping out. Actually, his face was sort of neutral. He was calm. "Are you okay?"

He laughed softly. "You don't need to worry about me, love. Please, don't worry about me."

…

I could hear Charlie's voice from the Cullens' living room, and he was upstairs in Carlisle's office with Carlisle, Esme, and most recently, Edward. My dad had demanded that Edward join them a few minutes ago. I assumed that Esme had suggested her idea to him, and he was – as expected – hesitant to the idea. He would be the most hesitant about Edward.

"This is ridiculous," I whispered to Alice, as if Charlie would hear from up the stairs and down the hall. "If I wasn't dating Edward – if I was _just _your best friend, he wouldn't have a problem with it. He'd be thankful for the invitation. He'd be thrilled."

Alice patted my knee. "It's okay. Well, it _will _be."

My eyebrows shot up. "You've seen something?"

"Charlie knows that long hours at the police station are going to be unavoidable for the next few weeks, maybe even as long as a month," she told me with a smug smile. "Esme's logic just pushes him to admit what his brain knows and his mouth hasn't yet said."

I nodded, relieved. Edward and I really did need this time to bond with each other, as mates. It was still odd to use that word, but I was slowly growing used to the vampire vocabulary.

Jasper walked through the front door, then, and Alice shot up. She leaped happily into his arms and they peppered kisses all down each other's face, laughing and cuddling. Even when he sat her down and her shoes made a feminine _clack _on the wooden floor, they didn't release each other. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to openly gawk but also feeling intrigued by their bond and love for each other, and I felt a warm feeling spread over me. That would be me and Edward for the rest of _eternity_. We would love each other forever, now. It was the most amazing feeling in the entire world.

When the door to Carlisle's office opened and they all stepped out, Charlie observed Edward and I closely. He watched us prudently all through dinner, and when we got home, he told me what Esme had recommended. I acted surprised, but I knew that he had been pleased with the way that Edward had treated me, and my father's acceptance proved to me further that Edward and I were meant to be.

* * *

**Author's Note: I know some of you will be curious as to what Esme might have said to Charlie to get him to agree to let Bella stay with them when he's away, but hey – I have to leave **_**something **_**to your imaginations. Esme is logical and Charlie is worried about Bella's well-being, and he knows that he can't afford to lose his job, especially now that Bella's going through expensive chemo treatments. Leaving, for him, is unavoidable if he wants to keep getting paychecks. Keep that in mind during your . . . **_**imagining. **_**:) **

**Thanks for reading, everyone. Leave a review for me. **


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